Cheryl Grills

Africentrism: Psychometric Analyses of a Self-Report Measure

This article describes the development of a self-report measure of Africentrism, defined here as the degree to which a person adheres to the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles) in African and African American culture. Beginning with a pool of 25 Likert-type items, the authors tested two alternate forms of their Africentrism measure in a series offour studies. The reliability (internal consistency) of the measure wasfoundto be well above a minimum criterionforthe purpose of group comparisons. Indicators of construct validity and known-groups validity were also favorable. The authors recommend a 15-item version of the measure for future testing and conclude with hypotheses regarding the importance of Africentrism in assessing African-centered interventions.

Effects of a Culturally Congruent Intervention on Cognitive Factors Related to Drug-Use Recovery

This paper describes a culturally congruent intervention to promote recovery from illegal drug use among African Americans and reports initial outcomes. The intervention was based on the transtheoretical stages-of-change model and on techniques of focused dyadic counseling and motivational interviewing. Subjects were randomly assigned to the culturally congruent intervention or to a control condition. Each condition featured a single counseling session during which drug-related and other needs were assessed and appropriate referrals offered. Posttest data indicated that subjects in the culturally congruent condition were more involved in the counseling session, more willing to self-disclose, more motivated to seek help for drug-use-associated problems, and higher on preparation for change.

African-Centered Drug Treatment: An Alternative Conceptual Paradigm for Drug Counseling with African-American Clients

An alternative conceptual framework is presented for understanding the culturally normative behavior of African-Americans in drug abuse treatment and recovery, based on an appreciation of core African-centered beliefs. Key ontological and epistemological assumptions of traditional clinical and counseling interventions are presented that highlight the differences between traditional goals and theories and the proposed alternative conceptual system and treatment strategies. Implications for African-centered treatment and future research on the course of addiction and recovery among African-Americans are discussed.

Motivating Illegal Drug Use Recovery: Evidence for a Culturally Congruent Intervention:

Public health interventions may be more effective if they are congruent with cultural values of the target community. To test this possibility, the authors conducted a randomized field trial of a motivational intervention to promote recovery from illegal drug use among a sample of 269 African Americans. The intervention, based on transtheoretical stage-of-change concepts, featured a needs assessment and service referrals and was congruent with relevant African American cultural values. Participants were randomly assigned to this intervention or to a standard assessment-referral protocol. Motivational intervention participants were significantly less likely to be using illegal drugs 1 year later. This finding suggests that motivational intervention congruent with cultural values of the target population can be effective in promoting recovery from drug use..

Engaging Homeless Youth in Community-Based Participatory Research A Case Study From Skid Row, Los Angeles

Growing evidence highlights the benefits to youth of involvement in community-based participatory research. Less attention has been paid, however, to the contributions youth can make to helping change health-promoting policy through such work. We describe a multi-method case study of a policy-focused community-based participatory research project in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, California, where a small group of homeless youth worked with adult mentors to develop and conduct a survey of 96 homeless youth and used the findings to help secure health-promoting policy change. We review the partnership’s work at each stage of the policy-making process; its successes in changing policy regarding recreation, juvenile justice, and education; and the challenges encountered, especially with policy enforcement. We share lessons learned, including the importance of strong adult mentors and of policy environments conducive to sustainable, health-promoting change for marginalized youth.

Desire for Help Among African-American Drug Users

We examined demographic factors, drug-problem severity indicators, and social and personal resources of African-American drug users as correlates of their self-reported desire for help with problems related to drug use. Avoiding the “ethnic gloss” of earlier research, we included ethnicity-related attitudes, perceptions, and experiences among the factors tested. Findings suggested that interpersonal problem recognition was a key determinant of desire for help in this sample. Two additional factors associated with desire for help in multivariate analysis were conventional moral beliefs and expected benefit of drug treatment. We cite implications of these findings for patterns of help-seeking and recovery among treatment-naive African-American drug users.

Culture, Racial Socialization, and Positive African American Youth Development

Positive youth development is critical for African American youth as they negotiate a social, political, and historical landscape grounded in systemic inequities and racism. One possible, yet understudied, approach to promote positive youth development is to increase African American youth consciousness and connection to their Africentric values and culture. The primary purpose of this article was to investigate the degree to which cultural and group consciousness factors (i.e., cultural orientation, Africentric values, and racial socialization) predicted positive youth development (i.e., future orientation, prosocial behavior, political/community, and social justice/equality civic mindedness) and how these might differ by gender. This article utilized survey data from 1,930 African American youth participants of the Pen or Pencil™ mentoring program. Results generally indicated that cultural orientation, Africentric values and, to a lesser degree, racial socialization, predicted positive youth development variables, with these effects varying by gender. These findings suggest that enhancing cultural consciousness may support the positive development of African American youth, although male and female youth may respond to these efforts in different ways.

Communities of Color Creating Healthy Environments to Combat Childhood Obesity.

Ethnic and racial health disparities present an enduring challenge to community-based health promotion, which rarely targets their underlying population-level determinants (e.g., poverty, food insecurity, health care inequity). We present a novel 3-lens prescription for using community organizing to treat these determinants in communities of color based on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations Communities Creating Healthy Environments initiative, the first national project to combat childhood obesity in communities of color using community organizing strategies. The lenses--Social Justice, Culture-Place, and Organizational Capacity-Organizing Approach--assist health professional-community partnerships in planning and evaluating community organizing-based health promotion programs. These programs activate community stakeholders to alter their communitys disease-causing, population-level determinants through grassroots policy advocacy, potentially reducing health disparities affecting communities of color.

Communities Creating Healthy Environments: improving access to healthy foods and safe places to play in communities of color.

• Community organizing has promise as a viable public health strategy to impact childhood obesity.

The Context, Perspective, and Mission of ABPsi: Past and Present

On September 1, 1967, a year before the advent of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) and a mere 7 months before his death, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., took the podium at the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) annual convention in Washington, D.C., as the convention’s Invited Distinguished Address (reprinted in the Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1968). His critique and call to action remain highly instructive and predestined the myriad reasons that birthed the ABPsi. Dr. King audaciously and eloquently stated,