Addressing the social determinants of health (SDOH) that influence teen pregnancy is paramount to eliminating disparities and achieving health equity. Expanding prevention efforts from purely individual behavior change to improving the social, political, economic, and built environments in which people live, learn, work, and play may better equip vulnerable youth to adopt and sustain healthy decisions. In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in partnership with the Office of Adolescent Health funded state- and community-based organizations to develop and implement the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Community-Wide Initiative. This effort approached teen pregnancy from an SDOH perspective, by identifying contextual factors that influence teen pregnancy and other adverse sexual health outcomes among vulnerable youth. Strategies included, but were not limited to, conducting a root cause analysis and establishing nontraditional partnerships to address determinants identified by community members. This article describes the value of an SDOH approach for achieving health equity, explains the integration of such an approach into community-level teen pregnancy prevention activities, and highlights two project partners' efforts to establish and nurture nontraditional partnerships to address specific SDOH.

, 2000). Students were taught from an inquiry-based approach as the teacher read aloud each book, and asked students what they noticed. Students reviewed the picture books to guide them as they were challenged to improve their writing. Findings from the study illustrate that picture books as mentor texts can help secondary students of all ability levels improve their word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions in narrative writing as measured by a writing trait rubric created by Vicki Spandel and adapted by Jim Burke. Picture books were tools that helped students think and act like writers. Conclusions also highlighted the lack of word choice and sentence fluency instruction in the students' formative years. This study shed light on the abstract nature of sentence fluency, and an effective way to mitigate this problem. This study provided a new angle with which to teach the writing traits through narrative composition instruction, and teacher modeling. Further, this study adds to the literature of effective high school instruction as picture books as mentor texts are less common in the high school English Language Arts classroom.

Combined‐text picture books unite multiple genres, providing nuanced information on a single topic from the unique lens of each genre. By providing guided practice in reading and writing a combined‐text picture book, teachers can help students develop sensitivity to different types of texts, to what they do and how they do it. Such sensitivity can give students a foundation for selecting appropriate strategies for reading and writing effectively in a wider variety of genres. This article describes the process of explicit instruction, discussion, and guided practice with one such text, One Leaf Rides the Wind, that helped one class of seventh‐grade students develop as strategic readers and writers when they created a class version of a combined‐text picture book.

Allozyme data and DNA strand break frequencies were compared among populations of Pleurocera canaliculatum from five sites with varying mercury contamination on the North Fork Holston River (NFHR) in southwestern Virginia, USA. Allozyme genotype frequencies for four loci were significantly different between populations from the three most highly contaminated sites and those from two lesser contaminated sites. In addition, heterozygosity at three of these loci was significantly lower in the populations from the most highly contaminated sites. The DNA strand break frequency was significantly correlated to whole-body total mercury concentration in snails from three sites. These data add to the evidence supporting the use of DNA strand breakage as an indicator of chemical contamination and the use of allozyme analysis as a marker of contamination and possible selection for pollution resistance. However, the relationship between contaminant-induced changes in the genetic variation of enzymes of central metabolism and the functionalities upon which selection for resistance may act remain unclear, and mechanisms other than selection for resistance must be considered. Use of enzymes from other biochemical pathways may be appropriate for other species or for those under other chemical pollution pressures.

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