Organized around the ways hoarding captures the attention of service providers, the handbook provides tools to help professionals assess the problem, coordinate and delegate tasks, and work directly with reluctant hoarders and others affected by the hoarding.

“There is some misunderstanding regarding hoarding, and often professionals don’t know enough about what the other professionals do when intervening with hoarding,” Bratiotis said. “Our goal was to write a book that is used by the many diverse disciplines that assist people with the problem.”

Steketee and Bratiotis are the principle investigator and director, respectively, of SSW’s Hoarding Research Team, which also includes Assistant Professor Jordana Muroff and BU graduate and undergraduate students.

The team’s research activities include studying the nature of the problem of hoarding; individual, group and webcam cognitive behavioral treatment interventions; and community task force responses to the problem. In addition, the team provides resource and referrals, professional training and family consultation.

Daniel Miller

A recent study by Boston University School of Social Work Assistant Professor Daniel Miller found that different characteristics of home and school environments were related to a child’s body mass index (BMI) in kindergarten and the rate of BMI growth until fifth grade.

Using growth curve modeling and a sample of approximately 11,400 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study kindergarten cohort, the study investigates the role school and home environments play in the childhood obesity epidemic.

Miller’s research concluded that after controlling for a large number of socio-demographic variables, children’s overall activity levels, characteristics of schools, and the influence of early health, a number of different home and school factors were found to be significantly associated with a child’s BMI in kindergarten and the rate of change in BMI over time.

“Environmental factors are the root of the obesity epidemic,” Miller wrote. “The identification of the full set of environmental factors related to increases in BMI is an important task for current research.”

Children who watched more television, who had mothers who worked more often outside of the home, who ate more breakfasts and lunches at school, and who attended schools with gymnasiums rated as adequate by administrators had BMIs that grew at a significantly faster rate, suggesting increased risk for obesity.  Children who got more hours of sleep per night, who ate more lunches at school, and who attended schools with cafeterias and gymnasiums rated as adequate by school administrators had significantly lower levels of BMI in kindergarten.  Children who ate breakfasts more often with their families and spent more minutes in recess had BMIs that grew more slowly over time.

“Further research and policy efforts should continue to acknowledge the multi-etiological manner by which the environment can affect rates of child obesity,” Miller said.  “It is important [that we] pay attention to the multiple ways that children’s environments can promote or protect against obesity.  It may not be worthwhile just to focus only on one risk or protective factor.”

The paper, “Associations between the home and school environments and child body mass index,” appears in the March issue of Social Science & Medicine.

Hyeouk Chris Hahm

According to a new study by Hyeouk Chris Hahm, an Assistant Professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, a highly-controlling male partner did not influence condom use behaviors among Asian-American women.  However, the study did find that a highly-controlling partner increased by fivefold an Asian-American woman’s risk of engaging in other high HIV risk behaviors.

Published in AIDS and Behavior, the paper, “Gender Power Control, Sexual Experiences, Safer Sex Practices and Potential HIV Risk Behaviors among Young Asian-American Women,” analyzes the sex and HIV risk behaviors of Asian-American women, and investigates the role of the Theory of Gender and Power – which suggests that a woman’s self-protection is often swayed by economic factors, abusive partnerships, and socialization to be sexually passive or ignorant.  While the theory has proved useful in predicting safer sex practices and HIV risk behaviors among Latin-American and African women, Hahm is the first to test the theory with Asian-American women.

“For Asian-American women, the relationship between gender power and their sexual behaviors has shown complex pictures,” said Hahm.  “Unlike Latinas or women in Africa, gender power control within young Asian-American women’s intimate relationships had different associations depending on the type of sexual behavior.  My follow-up analysis indicated that women who perceived themselves as having lower power were more likely to be depressed, and more likely to be engaged in HIV risk behaviors.  Understanding the role of depression for these women will be another important area of research.”