Objective: The present research aimed to describe perceptions and behaviours around the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) by youths.Design: A formative, qualitative study which conducted four focus groups. Transcripts were analysed and themes related to reasons youths drink SSB and water, and conversely do not drink SSB and water, were analysed to reveal thematic clusters around sensory factors, environment and policy, access, marketing and role model influences, and health risks.Setting: A rural, tri-ethnic community in New Mexico, USA.Participants: Middle- and high-school students, parents and teachers.Results: Although youths and adults were aware of the health risks of soda, they did not translate this information to other SSB, including sports drinks and sweetened tea. Moreover, their perceptions of risks of dyes outweighed their concern with sugar. Youths and adults were aware of water’s health benefits, but they focused on short-term benefits. Youths and adults perceived water as unappealing. Adults were also concerned with water safety and access.Conclusions: This formative research has implications for decreasing SSB consumption and simultaneously increasing water intake among youths in rural communities. Addressing unique access and safety concerns related to water in rural communities, as well as increasing awareness of the risks of all types of SSB, can work together in a positive feedback loop to change perceptions and behaviours with long-term health consequences. Specific policy suggestions include strengthening school policies to restrict all types of SSB and water promotion efforts that address access, safety and health benefits.

Background: Conflicts around the world have resulted in a record high number of refugees. Family separation is a critical factor that impacts refugee mental health. Thus, it is important to explore refugees’ ability to maintain contact with family members across the globe and the ways in which they attempt to do so. It is increasingly common for refugees to use information and communication technologies (ICTs), which include mobile phones, the internet, and social media sites, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, and Viber, for these purposes. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore refugees’ perceptions of the impact of communication through ICTs on their mental health, the exercise of agency by refugees within the context of ICT use, especially their communication with their families, and logistical issues that affect their access to ICTs in the United States. Methods: We used a constructivist grounded theory approach to analyze in-depth interviews of 290 adult refugee participants from different countries, who were enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of a community-based mental health intervention. Results: Analyses showed that communication through ICTs had differing impacts on the mental health of refugee participants. ICTs, as channels of communication between separated families, were a major source of emotional and mental well-being for a large number of refugee participants. However, for some participants, the communication process with separated family members through digital technology was mentally and emotionally difficult. The participants also discussed ways in which they hide adversities from their families through selective use of different ICTs. Several participants noted logistical and financial barriers to communicating with their families through ICTs. Conclusions: These findings are important in elucidating aspects of refugee agency and environmental constraints that need to be further explicated in theories related to ICT use as well as in providing insight for researchers and practitioners involved in efforts related to migration and mental health.

Immigration is at the forefront of national, state, and local policy struggles in the United States, and Latinx/@ immigrants have experienced increased deportations, detention, and individual threats. A mobilities perspective allows analysis to extend our view of migration beyond frameworks confined to pre- and postmigration, examining trajectories of social inclusion and exclusion that are influenced by multiple factors in the receiving country. The Immigrant Well-being Project, a community-based participatory research project involving university faculty, students, staff, and representatives from 4 community-based organizations (CBOs), was initiated in New Mexico in 2017 to better understand and promote Latinx/@ immigrant mental health and integration by creating change at multiple levels. We began these efforts by conducting an in-depth study of the mental health needs, stressors, current socioeconomic, legal, and political context, and local solutions as experienced by 24 Latinx/@ immigrants and their mixed status families. Five trajectories of immigrant integration emerged: continuous exclusion, simultaneous exclusion and inclusion, continuous inclusion, movement from exclusion to inclusion, and movement from inclusion to exclusion. These diverse mobilities were shaped by participants’ social locations, agency, and experiences with CBOs, which played critical roles in creating, maintaining, and/or transforming immigrants’ trajectories. However, CBOs could not completely buffer immigrants from the current hostile climate and related stressors that resulted in experiences of exclusion or movement from inclusion to exclusion. These findings add to understandings of immigrant mental health, complex ongoing mobility, and mechanisms of resilience and resistance within the United States and have important implications for policy and practice.

The insights of Latinx/@ immigrants are essential to developing interventions that better address complex multilevel phenomena impacting mental health. Despite important advances in methods that genuinely embody participatory research practices, attention to collaborative data collection, analysis, and dissemination are limited. Our aim is to describe the development and implementation of research practices to address these gaps through an emphasis on and understanding of the centrality of language in collaborative research processes. Guided from the outset by community-based participatory research principles, our community-academic research partnership recognized the importance of developing and intentionally studying our collaborative processes. As part of an ethnographic interview study with 24 Latinx/@ immigrants, a community-university research team developed innovative methods, including practices related to research team meetings, data collection, analysis, and dissemination, which we documented through ongoing discussion and reflection. The resulting participatory research processes were grounded in a theoretical framework of praxis and language and included six innovative and iterative stages: (a) Establishing the research team, (b) planning the interview process/data collection, (c) developing the data analysis methodology, (d) interpreting findings to adapt the intervention, (e) integrating results of the participatory process into the analysis, and (f) data analysis for dissemination. A focus on praxis and language revealed how the language of research structures' power, meaning, feeling, collaboration, analysis, and transformation. We also found that bilingual participatory analytic processes have important implications with respect to achieving genuine inclusion in rigorous research that moves toward equity for Latinx/@ immigrants and other populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).