What happened in the 60's: Community psychology, social policy, and the 99%

Quick - what do South Korea, Finland, Canada, and Japan all have in common?

(a)    They all outrank the U.S. in reading, math, and science
(b)    Their citizens have higher life expectancies than those in the U.S.
(c)    Compared to the U.S., they have far greater levels of income equality
(d)    All of the above

 In case you haven’t guessed it, the answer is included in the body of this blog post. 

Until very recently, it seemed that income inequality was the pink elephant in the proverbial room of American discourse. Sure, the lifestyles of the super-rich routinely littered our media landscape. But the expectation was that those watching would envy them, perhaps even resent them a little bit, but most of all want to be them. Viewers were expected to want their huge houses, multiple cars, and overpriced wardrobes, not to mention their lavish super sweet 16s and platinum weddings. Imagine if one of these shows or celebrity profiles was followed by a frank conversation about the state of income inequality in the U.S. It would never happen.

This is why I have been so excited to see the growth of Occupy Wall St, and its rapid spread throughout the country and even beyond its borders. Despite critiques about the movement not having a clear message, there’s been one phrase that’s captured the public imagination – “We are the 99%.” It’s not only the phrase, but the many honest stories  by ordinary Americans written on pieces of paper or cardboard, that have resonated with people. The stories are compelling, and the slogan is clear – ordinary Americans are tired of seeing politics and media controlled by the richest 1%. The movement has grown to the degree that it cannot be ignored, even by the mainstream media, or by politicians who would rather see it just go away.

Income inequality (and wealth inequality, which is different but correlated) is not just about who gets jobs and material goods. Study after study has shown that low socioeconomic status negatively affects such essentials as academic performance and health and that the negative effects of individual low SES can be compounded by additional community level effects of living in a low SES neighborhood. In a conversation about multilevel modeling, one education researcher mentioned that his attempts to study the negative impact of low SES on academic performance in more egalitarian European countries didn’t work because the disparate income levels he wanted to use as predictors simply couldn't be found.

While my pop quiz at the beginning of this post is based on cursory glances at data on academic performance,  life expectancy, and income inequality, (btw, the answer is "d") there are reasons to believe that there can be systematic negative effects of income inequality on a national level. This means that, as opposed to the trickle-down theory that states that economic gain for those on the highest rungs of the economic ladder leads to better lives for those on the lower rungs, there may be more of a drag-down effect happening in which greater income inequality leads to a less educated, unhealthier, and altogether weaker nation.

One quote about the Occupy Wall St movement that has made its way through social media may bring a smile to some of the founders of community psychology - which, like many great things, sprung forth in the 1960’s. Peter King, a conservative politician in New York, warned that the conversations resulting from the Occupy Wall Street movement can, like the protests of the 1960’s, end up affecting social policy. And to that I say, yes we can.

Gina Cardazone, M.A.

University of Hawai`i, Mānoa

Psychology of Climate Change: An Uncertain Future

Though the fact of climate change has not been under scientific debate for decades, the uncertainty of climate change remains.  How can this be?  How can fact exist so easily with uncertainty?  “It simply can’t” is the answer given by politicians, political pundits, and others who seek to cast doubt on climate sciences.  Especially after the so-called “Climategate” in which climate scientists’ emails were leaked to the public and then distorted to show wrong-doing where none existed, the public may be more confused than ever about how fact and uncertainty can coexist.

In scientific circles, “uncertainty” means something different than it does to the rest of us.  If I say I am uncertain if I’ll go to the store today, it means I may or may not go.  When a climate scientist says the sea will rise 0.5 to 1.0 meters in the next 50 to 100 years, it means the sea level is going to rise.  The uncertainty is how much it will rise, when exactly it will reach which levels, and where exactly it will rise most (remember the sea is not rising evenly around the world).  Scientists are sure about climate change; the questions of uncertainty are the specifics of climate change – how bad will it be in which year, in which place, given a vast array of possible circumstances?

The computer models that calculate climate projections are getting better every year, though each has different strengths and weaknesses, and all of them take a very long time and a lot of processor power to generate.  Reports like the IPCC compile multiple models to generate a range of projections – somewhere between the best-case and worst-case scenarios.  What are some factors they just can’t predict even with these computer models?  Most important are the human factors – what are we as a species going to do to address climate change?  Will we cut all emissions?  Will we do nothing?  Will we increase our CO2 pollution?

Scientists are used to dealing with uncertainty.  No single study ever “proves” anything; it only points to an answer.  When hundreds or thousands of studies point to the same answer, scientists can feel pretty comfortable saying “this is probably the case.”  They keep that word “probably” because new theories, new technology, or new scientists may discover something that changes everything.  Science is never “proof.”  At best, it is “our best understanding of the way things are.”  Scientists are rarely comfortable giving a definitive answer.  They are comfortable with “best understandings” because there is always uncertainty.

But people are often not so good with uncertainty.  Even scientists in their daily non-work-related lives will crave stability.  Part of human psychology is that we expect our lives to be today more or less like they were yesterday.  We expect the people we know to have stable personalities.  We feel great stress when our lives change abruptly.  Conservation of Resources theory explains that people work hard to obtain and maintain those things we value most.  When the stability of our resources is threatened (much less interrupted), people experience stress that can even become severe enough to affect our health.

             It is no wonder that people want to have exact answers about what is going to happen with climate change.  And it is no wonder that those who have an anti-climate-sciences agenda are able to exploit our very real need for answers when they claim scientists don’t really know anything or are just making it all up.  But with nearly 7 billion people on the planet, almost 200 countries, and certainly more than one opinion on what to do about climate change, it is no wonder that there is so much uncertainty about what the future holds.

Kati Corlew, M.A.

University of Hawai`i, Mānoa

First Round of Grant Winners Announced!

The SCRA Community Mini-Grant, sponsored for this first time this year, is a time-sensitive grant designed to be responsive to community needs.  


Our first two awardees were announced this year.  You can read about their projects below - we are very excited to sponsor them, and look forward to hearing about their work as it progresses.  


SCRA plans to offer ten grants, with an average award of $1,200.  All current SCRA members and their community collaborators are welcome to apply. For more information on this grant, please see http://www.scra27.org/practice or email SCRACommunityGrants [at] gmail.com. 


"Sense of Place and Sense of Community in Tuvalu, a Country Being Threatened by Sea Level Rise"

SCRA Member/Applicant: Laura Kati Corlew

This study seeks to understand the cultural impacts of climate change in Tuvalu, a low-lying island nation in the South Pacific.  Tuvalu is projected to become uninhabitable in the next 50-100 years if sweeping climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts are not put into place.  As a developing nation, Tuvalu is not responsible for climate change, and yet her indigenous population is facing grave consequences.  Using Photovoice methodology, this study will delve into the connections between land, community, culture, and well-being within the context of the climate change threat.  Participants will lead the research with their photographs; results will combine images with spoken words.  The SCRA Community Mini Grant will fund research equipment (cameras, printer, etc.), food for the focus groups, and the dissemination of research outcomes in Tuvalu.  Multiple Tuvalu leaders have noted to me that all too often researchers come to Tuvalu and take knowledge but leave nothing behind.  This grant will fund the development, printing, and shipping of results books to Tuvalu for cost-free dissemination to participants and key stakeholder agencies that work with climate change and/or community well-being.

Support for Veterans in Chicago

SCRA Member/Applicant: Geraldine Palmer

North Side Housing and Supportive Services in partnership with VetNet provides Benefits Check-Up project. The project will target United States veterans, with a focus on combat veterans and provide them with three peer support specialists (veterans as well) who will spend a day meeting with veterans and filling out online benefits applications to help them gain access to the benefits they are entitled to and deserve. The peer support specialists will also provide referrals to housing, health and mental health services and other resources, as well as encouragement. The project is expected to help mitigate the veteran's stress of returning to community life and help expedite the process of readjustment. The project will take place on Veterans Day, November 11, 2011. The SCRA grant will support VetNet key staff on the project, rental costs for space, marketing and food supplies.

No Future Without Forgiveness: Community Psychology and Restorative Justice

“Americans understand justice.” This was the response Gov. Rick Perry gave as to why the audience at last night’s GOP debate erupted in applause when it was pointed out that he’d order more executions than “any other governor in modern times.” Asked whether he ever had trouble sleeping at night wondering if he had been responsible for the death of an innocent person, he replied no, describing capital punishment as “ultimate justice” for horrendous crimes.

Does Rick Perry understand justice? If justice is to be described as state-enforced punishment for wrongdoing, then yes, he does, and so does his audience. However, this version of justice – retributive justice – is not the only definition that exists. When it comes to “heinous crimes” it’s natural to want to see the party responsible suffer for their wrongdoing. I would be lying if I claimed not to rejoice at news of the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year. But on the day of the September 11th attacks, I cried not only for the deaths that occurred on that day, but also for the countless deaths that I knew would result from our attempts to seek out “justice” for this act.

Ten years later, over $3 trillion dollars has been spent and countless lives have been lost as we’ve seen ourselves mired in some of the longest wars in US history. Some claim that we are safer now, while others argue that we’ve played into the hands of our attackers. Regardless of where one stands, it’s difficult to find someone who believes that somehow through all of this war, we’ve achieved “justice.”

When it comes to some of the most horrid crimes - rape, murder, acts of systematic oppression– there is little solace to be gained from purely retributive approaches. An alternative to this form of justice exists. Restorative justice frames criminal acts not as offenses against the state that require punishment, but as offenses against individuals and communities that necessitate healing. Restorative justice is not just a feel-good concept - it has been applied to some of the most challenging crimes. Survivors of rape and domestic violence often find the criminal justice system frustrating and dissatisfying, and restorative justice approaches may be superior in addressing issues of gender-based violence. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, designed to uncover the truth about apartheid in South Africa, has been held up as a model of restorative justice. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written a book about his experience chairing the commission, titled “No Future Without Forgiveness." While the commission came under heavy criticism for its policy of offering amnesty to those who participated, and even Tutu has said elsewhere that there must be greater economic equality in South Africa in order for it to achieve peace, the TRC was historic in its scope and its application of the restorative justice framework.

Restorative justice is not only applicable to acts of individual or systematic violence. It is also a powerful potential tool for conflict resolution and community healing. A pair of events centered on Restorative Circles to be held in Illinois in October is being sponsored by PsySR (Psychologists for Social Responsibility). As community psychology practitioners, we’re interested in helping to build healthier communities, and restorative justice provides a useful framework for addressing challenging problems in a manner that’s consistent with our values. I can’t help but think that beats cheering for death.

Gina Cardazone, M.A.
University of Hawai`i, Mānoa

Psychology of Climate Change: “Intention, Everyone!”

Despite what some conspiracy theorists may believe (or what some environmentalists may mutter to themselves when feeling frustrated), anthropogenic climate change is not happening by plan. There is no grand design or league of evil geniuses who have set in motion a nefarious plot to slowly raise the earth’s temperature over a few centuries. Climate change isn’t something we caused on purpose; it is something that started happening while we were busy focusing on other things.

The fact is, climate change was an easy thing to create once we kick-started the Industrial Revolution. At the beginning, it would have seemed impossible that a world so big could ever reach the limits of what shocks and pollution it could absorb. Our world is much smaller now in this age of the internet, cellphones, and ubiquitous airline travel. And our planet seems much smaller now in the age of garbage landslides , groundwater contamination, deforestation, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

We hit our limits while we were looking the other way.

This is one reason that stopping climate change poses such an enormous psychological challenge. It happened without our intent—a grand series of pollution coincidences on our road to development and modernization. How could something so inadvertent require such an extraordinary amount of money, effort, and international coordination to stop? It is something we cannot comfortably comprehend. But successfully addressing climate change requires sustained intent and huge changes to the way we have come to behave as a species.

Is everyone willing and able to commit?

Social scientists have recently been studying the increasing polarization and politicization of climate change in the US. In general, they have been finding that liberals and Democrats are more willing to believe in climate change sciences, and are more willing to support efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The question then becomes, why are conservatives and Republicans less willing to believe in climate change sciences and less willing to support mitigation and adaptation? The answer has a great deal to do with human psychology. People are much more willing to believe in ideas that fit easily into our current worldview. Certain values commonly associated with the Republican party (free market, deregulation of industry, and smaller government) are diametrically opposed to the expensive, restrictive, and highly coordinated efforts needed to address climate change.

It is difficult for people to accept changes that fundamentally go against what they believe, and it is difficult for people to make 180 degree changes in their behaviors (skeptical readers, I ask you to convert to another religion today, and to think about all of the New Year’s Resolutions you’ve made and broken). People have fair success with small, non-threatening changes, but sweeping and belief-challenging actions are difficult to sustain.

In Community Psychology, we assume that people do not exist in a bubble but that they influence, and are influenced by, their settings. We look at the many contextual issues that contribute to the status quo, and then look for “levers of change” – key points that, if changed, will change everything. For climate change, we must seek levers of change for our behaviors and our intentions. How do we change human civilization to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate? And how do we change ourselves so that our sustainability intentions are, well, sustained?

One thing is sure: no intergovernmental panels were convened to figure out how to cause climate change. But in order to address it, we need massive coordination of action and intent.

Kati Corlew, M.A.

University of Hawai`i, Mānoa 

New Hospital Community Benefit Requirements: Who Will They Benefit?

I was recently invited to present at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) meeting in Atlanta regarding new requirements in the recently passed Affordable Health Care Act and also in new IRS regulations concerning Hospital Community Benefits.
Yes, the IRS is regulating hospital community benefits!
Sounds boring? Think again. This is a real opportunity for communities to partner with local hospitals on key community issues.
What are Community Benefits? Non profit hospitals earn their non-profit status by demonstrating that they have met community health needs that have been determined by a community health needs assessment. This can be a meaningful community collaboration process or it can be window dressing. So, new regulations by HHS and the IRS are trying to ensure that the process has meaning.
A number of years back I was involved in a process of voluntary community benefit guidelines for hospitals and HMOs being piloted by then Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. Through the trials and tribulations of that process we all learned many lessons that can be brought to bear on this present effort. My role, as the founder of  Healthy Communities Massachusetts, in this earlier process was to organize the community side of the equation – local groups that mobilized to hold their community hospitals accountable.
What we discovered was that a few hospitals took the community benefits process seriously and did a great job of partnering with their local communities and developing effective, responsive and relevant community programs. However, most hospitals tried to do the minimum. Their Community Benefits Committees did not represent those most affected by the issues from the grassroots in their community but rather represented the “usual suspects” like local community non-profits, many of whom already held contracts with the hospital.
It was a major effort just to get many of the hospitals to submit their annual reports that described their required community assessments and their community benefit activities in the community. Most fascinating was that when we looked at the reports in many cases we saw almost no correlation between the community assessments and what the hospitals actually did. Their community needs assessment process may have determined that their community need was X and yet they provided Y because Y was more in tune with their mission and plan. Clearly this voluntary process needed more bite to be effective.
So fast forward to 2011, and we see potentially much the same scenario. At this excellent conference, we heard of outstanding examples of hospitals doing a great job of community benefits. I think of the work of Dory Escobar at St Joseph’s Health System in Sonoma County California. Dory is the Director of Healthy Communities and is a community organizer and her work represents those values. Her organizational framework has three areas: Advocacy Initiatives, Healthy Communities Programs and Community Health Programs. (See www.stjosephhealth.org).
We also heard of valuable tools from Julie Willems Van Dijk (U.Wisconsin) like a county system of health rankings. The Rankings are based on a model of population health that emphasizes the many factors that, if improved, can help make communities healthier places to live, learn, work and play. Building on the work of America’s Health Rankings the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has used this model to rank the health of Wisconsin counties every year since 2003. Rankings are now available for all counties in the country www.countyhealthranking.org.
Check it out for your county.
When I had my ten minute chance to present -(http://nnphi.org/CMSuploads/Panel%207%20-%20Wolff.pdf ) -
I urged hospitals to engage in true collaboration with those most affected by the issue in the community – with true collaboration described as relationships where we enhance the capacity of each other. I also suggested that community engagement go beyond the needs assessment stage of the process. Rather community partners need to share decision making throughout the community benefit process including setting priorities, implementation, and evaluation. I used the work of the Center for Health Equity and Social Justice at the Boston Public Health Commission as a model of this approach (see http://tomwolff.com/collaborative-solutions-newsletter-summer-10.htm).
So what happens from here on out?
These new regulations are an occasion for all of us to engage with our local hospitals. We must ask what they will be doing to meet these new requirements and tell them how we would like to partner with them in the process of creating their community needs assessment and then continue to work with them on the implementation of their community benefit programs that will meet the identified needs.
My good colleagues at the Community Tool Box (http://ctb.ku.edu) at the University of Kansas have been contracted by the CDC to develop “Recommended Practices for Enhancing Community Health Improvement”. This will be a very comprehensive tool kit based on the wonderful resources of the Community Tool Box for the community needs assessment process.  I will try to keep you informed as to when these resources will go public.
Tom Wolff  www.tomwolff.com

Building Community and Transforming Our Helping Systems

The time has come for us to rethink and transform the health and human services system in this country. These services cover a vast array of organizations providing a very broad range of services and consume large parts of federal, state and local budgets. The services are often critical for the consumers but the core premises on which the system is based and the system of delivery itself is highly dysfunctional.
The delivery system is characterized by:
1)      A focus on individuals not communities and ignores the environment in which the individual lives
2)      Focuses on the deficits of the individual and the community not their strengths and assets
3)      Services remain targeted at crises and remedial services ignoring how prevention could prevent the problem from occurring in the first place by catching issues upstream
4)      Our systems fail to respond to the diversity of our communities much less address issues of structural oppression, racism etc.
5)      Our helping systems excessively rely on professionals and fail to acknowledge and engage the natural helping systems of families and neighborhoods. Increasingly our helping systems have become detached from the communities they serve.
6)       Our helping system fails to engage those most affected by the issue as equal partners in planning, delivering and evaluating their interventions.
7)      As a system the health and human services in any given community tends to be: competitive rather than collaborative; fragmented so that individuals are treated for distinct problems rather than as whole beings; efforts are duplicated due to lack of information rather than coordinated
8)      Finally the helping system and many of those working in the system have lost their spiritual purpose. They may have chosen their fields with hopes of addressing the common good and now end up counting billable hours.

These system dysfunctions are discussed at greater length in my book The Power of Collaborative Solutions www.tomwolff.com
I have been preaching these dysfunctions and their solutions for decades so it was  a delight to find a fellow traveler and another community psychologist on this campaign in Isaac Prilleltensky , the Dean of  the School of Education at the University of Miami.
Isaac contrasts systems that he describes as SPEC vs DRAIN with SPEC systems standing for systems based on  Strength, Prevention, Empowering and Community. While DRAIN stands for Deficit, Reactive, Arrogant, Individual.
More details on Isaac's system are available at their web site: http://www.specway.org/wiki/collaboration
Many of us have some stories of individual systems, agencies or interventions that have been able to move from SPEC vs DRAIN (see community stories in my book, or previous issues of my Collaborative Solutions Newsletters  www.tomwolff.com ). These stories need more public airing.
However, the urgent questions now facing all of us are how do we transform our dysfunctional helping system to a strength based system that addresses the system shortcomings noted above and moves in new positive directions.
The present fiscal crisis is leading to dramatic cuts of funding to this helping sector but as noted in my last newsletter (Thriving and Surviving in Hard Times) this is not leading to system transformation but rather retrenchment to a more dysfunctional system. We are cutting prevention and keeping remediation, cutting community wide healthy community programs and keeping services for individuals, etc.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to convert our dysfunctional helping systems to ones that are focused on communities, prevention, strengths, our community's diversity, build on community helping systems, bring those most affected by the issues to the table as equal partners, operate collaboratively, and engage our spirituality as the compass for social change. What are your ideas for transformation of our nation's health and human service systems?


By Tom Wolff http://tomwolff.wordpress.com

This post first appeared at:

July 22, 2011: http://tomwolff.wordpress.com/

August 8, 2011: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Building-Community-and-Tra-by-Tom-Wolff-110808-357.html