Background 
The quality and quantity of individuals' social relationships has been linked not only to mental health but also to both morbidity and mortality.
Objectives 
This meta-analytic review was conducted to determine the extent to which social relationships influence risk for mortality, which aspects of social relationships are most highly predictive, and which factors may moderate the risk.
Data Extraction 
Data were extracted on several participant characteristics, including cause of mortality, initial health status, and pre-existing health conditions, as well as on study characteristics, including length of follow-up and type of assessment of social relationships.
Results 
Across 148 studies (308,849 participants), the random effects weighted average effect size was OR = 1.50 (95% CI 1.42 to 1.59), indicating a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow-up period. Significant differences were found across the type of social measurement evaluated (p<0.001); the association was strongest for complex measures of social integration (OR = 1.91; 95% CI 1.63 to 2.23) and lowest for binary indicators of residential status (living alone versus with others) (OR = 1.19; 95% CI 0.99 to 1.44).
Conclusions 
The influence of social relationships on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.

Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

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Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review

Community-based research in public health focuses on social, structural, and physical environmental inequities through active involvement of community members, organizational representatives, and researchers in all aspects of the research process. Partners contribute their expertise to enhance understanding of a given phenomenon and to integrate the knowledge gained with action to benefit the community involved. This review provides a synthesis of key principles of community-based research, examines its place within the context of different scientific paradigms, discusses rationales for its use, and explores major challenges and facilitating factors and their implications for conducting effective community-based research aimed at improving the public’s health.

/pdf/review-of-community-based-research-assessing-partnership-5goidkcn41.pdf

Review of community-based research: assessing partnership approaches to improve public health.

Over the past few decades, a new form of governance has emerged to replace adversarial and managerial modes of policy making and implementation. Collaborative governance, as it has come to be known, brings public and private stakeholders together in collective forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a contingency model of collaborative governance. After reviewing 137 cases of collaborative governance across a range of policy sectors, we identify critical variables that will influence whether or not this mode of governance will produce successful collaboration. These variables include the prior history of conflict or cooperation, the incentives for stakeholders to participate, power and resources imbalances, leadership, and institutional design. We also identify a series of factors that are crucial within the collaborative process itself. These factors include face-to-face dialogue, trust building, and the development of commitment and shared understanding. We found that a virtuous cycle of collaboration tends to develop when collaborative forums focus on ‘‘small wins’’ that deepen trust, commitment, and shared understanding. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our contingency model for practitioners and for future research on collaborative governance. Over the last two decades, a new strategy of governing called ‘‘collaborative governance’’ has developed. This mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making. In this article, we conduct a meta-analytical study of the existing literature on collaborative governance with the goal of elaborating a general model of collaborative governance. The ultimate goal is to develop a contingency approach to collaboration that can highlight conditions under which collaborative governance will be more or less effective as an

/pdf/collaborative-governance-in-theory-and-practice-4734b9fqbj.pdf

Collaborative governance in theory and practice

Numerous theories in social and health psychology assume that intentions cause behaviors. However, most tests of the intention- behavior relation involve correlational studies that preclude causal inferences. In order to determine whether changes in behavioral intention engender behavior change, participants should be assigned randomly to a treatment that significantly increases the strength of respective intentions relative to a control condition, and differences in subsequent behavior should be compared. The present research obtained 47 experimental tests of intention-behavior relations that satisfied these criteria. Meta-analysis showed that a medium-to-large change in intention (d = 0.66) leads to a small-to-medium change in behavior (d = 0.36). The review also identified several conceptual factors, methodological features, and intervention characteristics that moderate intention-behavior consistency.

/pdf/does-changing-behavioral-intentions-engender-behavior-change-4nqh8nlgfo.pdf

Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence.

Health promotion programs often lack a clearly specified theoretical foundation or are based on narrowly conceived conceptual models. For example, lifestyle modification programs typically emphasize individually focused behavior change strategies, while neglecting the environmental underpinnings of health and illness. This article compares three distinct, yet complementary, theoretical perspectives on health promotion: behavioral change, environmental enhancement, and social ecological models. Key strengths and limitations of each perspective are examined, and core principles of social ecological theory are used to derive practical guidelines for designing and evaluating community health promotion programs. Directions for future health promotion research are discussed, including studies examining the role of intermediaries (e.g., corporate decision-makers, legislators) in promoting the well-being of others, and those evaluating the duration and scope of intervention outcomes.

/pdf/translating-social-ecological-theory-into-guidelines-for-4py1s5d6ul.pdf

Translating social ecological theory into guidelines for community health promotion.

In this paper classical hybrid combustion theory is generalized to solid fuels that form a liquid layer on their burning surface. For several classes of liquefying fuels, the layer is hydrodynamically unstable in a gas e ow environment leading to substantial droplet entrainment into the gas stream. The susceptibility of a given fuel to this shear driven instability increases with decreasing viscosity and surface tension of the melt layer. The entrainment mass transfer, which acts in addition to the conventional gasie cation mechanism, is not affected by the blocking phenomenon induced by blowing from the surface. For practical oxidizer e ux levels encountered in hybrid rocket applications, droplet entrainment can dominate direct gasie cation. Such liquefying fuels can exhibit greatly increased surface regression rates compared to classical materials such as Hydroxyl Terminated Polybutadiene. One application of the theory is to solid cryogenic hybrids, which utilize frozen materials for the solid propellant. The theory successfully predicts why high regression rates are observed in tests of cryogenic solid pentane, solid methane, and solid oxygen. In addition, the theory explains the dependence of the burning rates of other tested cryogenic materials on the physical properties of the liquid layer. The theory also leads to the conclusion that certain noncryogenic materials such as parafe n and Polyethylene waxes will also exhibit high regression rates. This important result is cone rmed by lab scale tests performed at Stanford University on a high melting point parafe n wax.

Combustion of Liquefying Hybrid Propellants: Part 1, General Theory

Important goals of research-based community interventions include the long-term maintenance of effects and fostering of collaboration between researchers and community leaders. This article reviews the challenges associated with transferring innovations to community systems, changing program delivery from an experimental context controlled by researchers to program delivery controlled by community organizations, and sustaining long-term effects of interventions. It is suggested that researchers who develop and implement community interventions in diverse health areas need to confront several issues: (a) fostering effective long-term relationships between researchers and the communities they study and in which they intervene and (b) designing and implementing interventions that are useful to community systems after the formal phase of research ends.

Sustaining interventions in community systems: on the relationship between researchers and communities.

The Mechanism of Myosin VI Translocation and Its Load-Induced Anchoring

Adolescent sexual victimization, use of alcohol and other substances, and other health risk behaviors

The classical hybrid combustion theory is generalized to solid fuels that form a liquid layer on their burning surface. For several classes of liquefying fuels, the layer is hydrodynamically unstable leading to substantial droplet entrainment from the melt layer into the gas stream. The susceptibility of a given fuel to this shear driven instability increases with decreasing viscosity and surface tension of the melt layer. The entrainment mass transfer, which acts in addition to the conventional gasification mechanism, is not affected by the blocking phenomenon induced by blowing from the surface. For practical oxidizer flux levels encountered in hybrid rocket applications, droplet entrainment can dominate direct gasification. Such liquefying fuels can exhibit greatly increased surface regression rates compared to classical materials such as HTPB. One application of the theory is to solid cryogenic hybrids, which utilize frozen materials for the solid propellant. The theory successfully predicts why high regression rates are observed in tests of cryogenic solid pentane, solid pentane and solid oxygen. In addition, the theory explains the dependence of the burning rates of other tested cryogenic materials on the physical properties of the liquid layer. The theory also leads to the conclusion that certain non-cryogenic materials such as paraffin and PE waxes will also exhibit high regression rates. This important result is confirmed by lab scale tests performed at Stanford University on a paraffin-based fuel.

David G. Altman

Papers

Combustion of Liquefying Hybrid Propellants: Part 1, General Theory

Sustaining interventions in community systems: on the relationship between researchers and communities.

The Mechanism of Myosin VI Translocation and Its Load-Induced Anchoring

Adolescent sexual victimization, use of alcohol and other substances, and other health risk behaviors

Development and testing of paraffin-based hybrid rocket fuels