No abstract

Telehealth has been hypothesized as a solution for rural barriers precluding access to healthcare, of which distance remains one of the most significant. Providers, institutions, and policymakers may use distance as a metric to determine whether to keep, or to end, telehealth services. Although commonly used, straight line distance (SLD) may not reflect the true burden of distance (TD) for rural patients. A retrospective record review was conducted to determine the difference between SLD and TD for patients seeking behavioral health care at a large outpatient center. The discrepancy between SLD and TD ranged from 0.5 to 83.4 miles of additional actual travel distance ( mean =  − 17.6). The mean percentage that SLD underestimated TD was 31.9%. Findings highlight that when considering distance as a determining factor for telehealth services, SLD is an inaccurate representation of the travel burden on this sample of rural patients, suggesting the utility of TD as an alternative.

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Concerns about family life push some students away from a career in science or lead them away from particular career paths within science. Religion has been shown to have an influence on individuals’ values concerning both family and work. This study uses data from a survey of U.S. graduate students in five science disciplines to estimate a structural equation model examining paths between religiosity, work and family values, and intent to pursue different careers within science. The analysis finds that religiosity is positively associated with the importance placed on family and, through this mediator, is associated with a lower intent to pursue research‐focused academic jobs and higher intent to pursue teaching‐focused academic jobs. We discuss the implications of these findings, particularly as the analysis shows that women and some racial and ethnic minority students are more religious than their male and white peers.

Spontaneous volunteerism, or emergent volunteer behavior, is characterized by an individual's actions of impulsively offering volunteer services immediately following the occurrence of a natural disaster or community tragedy, such as a flood or terrorist attack. This type of volunteerism differs from traditional volunteer activities that are usually preplanned and not related to a recent tragedy. It is unclear what types of motivations spur individuals to volunteer after a disaster, whether spontaneous volunteers' experiences lead to willingness for continued volunteerism in the future, and whether motivations and experiences differ significantly by context. To study this phenomenon, spontaneous volunteers who offered help during the summer of 2016 southern West Virginia floods were surveyed. Following the Empathy-Altruism model of prosocial behavior, the impact of spontaneous volunteers' types of motivations and experiences during volunteering on their willingness to volunteer in the future was assessed. Results showed that differing motivation types can be influential on spontaneous disaster volunteers' willingness for future volunteerism, especially when their experiences while volunteering are taken into account. Few results align with previous research while others are contradictory, providing a rationale for continued research on the uniqueness of spontaneous volunteerism.