The long history of racial biases and tensions that have become part of the social fabric and organization of American society has periodically been brought into high relief by seemingly unconnected incidents involving police violence against Black peoples. Each of these extremely unfortunate individual incidents forms part of a larger pattern of institutionalized racism in the US.

In the context of recent tragic events, the Faculty of Criminal Justice at Bethune-Cookman University and the Faculty from the Department of Criminology at USF issue a joint statement on Institutionalized Racism. These two departments have previously come together to respond to the under-representation of African Americans in the field of criminology and criminal justice with the establishment of an enhanced access entry program for African American students into USF's criminology graduate program. Bethune-Cookman committed to pay a stipend for one of its African American criminal justice graduates to attend USF's criminology graduate program. In exchange, USF provided a tuition waiver and other expenses, and a scholarship to complete the final year of the Ph.D. program. USF also established a dedicated mentoring program for the selected student. As part of this experience, the student in the program agreed to return to Bethune-Cookman upon graduation to serve as a faculty member there for a period of two years to teach in an historically-Black institution.

To date, the first student in that program has competed an MA degree, and is entering the third year of the Ph.D. program. In the meantime, a second Bethune-Cookman student has also joined the program. While it is too early to speak of the successes of the students or the program, our departments hope that our initial project and experiences can be used to attract outside donor support for this initiative to further enhance access to doctoral education in criminology and criminal justice for African Americans.

The entire Statement can be found here.

The Florida Center for Behavioral Health Improvement and Solutions is proud to announce our Program Director, Marie McPherson, is the recipient of the NAMI Florida 2020 President's Unsung Hero Award. This award was presented to Ms. McPherson to recognize her significant contributions for those affected by mental illness on September 12, 2020 during NAMI Florida's All Together Now Virtual Speaker Series 2020.

Svetlana Yampolskaya, Research Associate Professor in Child & Family Studies (CFS) will be presenting a paper on Patterns of Service Use and Behavioral Health Profiles of Children Placed in Out-of-Home Care at the virtual conference, Coming Together for Action, which will be held October 7-9, 2020. The interdisciplinary conference is hosted by the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health & Social Justice. Through conferences, symposia, publications, interest groups, task forces, and other activities, the Global Alliance applies principles of social justice to a wide range of issues affecting children, adolescents, adults, families, schools, community mental health, and life span development. CFS Research Assistant Professor Roxann McNeish is the second author of the paper to be presented.

Tina Dillahunt-Aspillaga, Associate Professor in Child & Family Studies has been invited to serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation. The Journal, associated with the Association for Persons in Supported Employment, provides a forum for discussion and dissemination of information about the major areas that constitute vocational rehabilitation, including all aspects of the disability field.

The Florida Behavioral Health Collaborative Pediatric Hotline provides a wide range of services, coordinated by a care coordinator/resource navigator, to support peer-to peer consultation between pediatric care providers caring for children with behavioral health needs and child psychiatrists.

This free resource is available to all providers regardless of insurance carrier caring for children/youth up to 21 years old.

1. Arnold, M. L., Reichard, A., Gutman, K., Westermann, L., & Sanchez, V. (2020). Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Hearing Loss Self-Management Patient Education Materials: Development of the Caja de Instrumentos de Pérdida Auditiva. American Journal of Audiology, 1-10. doi:10.1044/2020_aja-19-00120
2. Carrion, I. V., Estapé, T., Neelamegam, M., Roberts, J., Wiltshire, J., & Estapé, J. (2020). Older Latinos' Beliefs and Attitudes Impacting Cancer Treatment. Journal of Cancer Studies and Therapeutics, 01(02), 38-44.
3. Lewinson, T., & Carrion, I. V. (2020). "They don't know who they have in here": Sense of community in budget hotels. Journal of Community Psychology. doi:10.1002/jcop.22448

If you have news/events, or recent/upcoming publications you would like posted on the CBCS website and/or newsletter, please send the details and any attachments to CBCS Marketing. (CBCSMarketing@usf.edu)

Be sure to include all pertinent information in the format you would like to have posted (title, date, times, location, event description and contact information). Please provide your information in editable digital text format.

Articles included in the CBCS Communique may be disseminated to USF Media outlets and/or beyond.