Kimberly A Fuller

Cleveland State University · School of Social Work

Background: The love, joy and sense of connection between humans and animal companions can bring shared health benefits. Often this is referred to as the ‘pet effect’. Previous research on the ‘pet effect’ suggests that living with an animal companion, and especially one who is considered part of the family, can increase human wellbeing, though to...

One uniquely marginalizing school environment for sexual and gender diverse (SGD) youth is school based sex education (SBSE). While research has documented the negative sexual and mental health impacts these marginalizing environments can have for SGD youth, we know less about the developmental competencies that this population of youth exercises t...

The purpose of this study is to describe how school-based sexuality education (SBSE) in the context of health education frames and teaches sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Understanding how schools address sexuality and gender provides insight into how school systems might ostracize sexual and gender diverse (SGD) youth. This stu...

The focus of this pilot study was to ascertain how bereaved African American caregivers prepared for the death of an older family member who died from a dementia-related diagnosis and the role of hospice care; an area with little research to date. Because African American older adults in the United States are at greater risk than Caucasian older ad...

Decision-making has been identified as one of the most important skillsets in sexual health. This exploratory qualitative study explored how US middle and high school textbooks integrate the recommended sexual health decision-making skills recommended by Future of Sex Education (FOSE), a collaboration of organisations in the USA supporting comprehe...

This study examines the unique role of sexually permissive attitudes in predicting binge drinking frequency among sexual minority cisgender females with a history of childhood sex abuse. Findings assert that holding sexually permissive views is an important predictor of increased binge drinking frequency among sexual minority emerging adult females...

Recent academic and popular conversations regarding #MeToo, sexual violence and harassment, and rape culture have begun to focus on K-12 educational spaces in the U.S., but they rarely examine how educational curricula actually foster or combat these dynamics. In this article, we present a qualitative content analysis of health education textbooks,...

The purpose of this study is to describe the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, two spirit, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth with school‐based sexuality education (SBSE), as well as to document strategies LGBTQ+ youth are using to address their evolving and specific sexual health needs outside of SBSE. Researchers co...

Bisexual individuals often face binegativity in relationships with intimate partners and the health disparities associated with discrimination. The present study sought to explore the little known aspect of identity-based partner acceptance of bisexual individuals. Through the eyes of the bisexual person identified by a snow-ball sampling method of...

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons require cultural humility and informed health care from their healthcare providers. Providers need to understand the distinct differences and intersections of each sexual identity and be aware of the health disparities characteristic of this population. Providers should become knowledgeable of appropriate qu...

Many transgender people enjoy positive intimate relationships, however such relationships exist within a context of broader discrimination, specifically cisgenderism. The present study sought to investigate the relationships between demographic variables, significant other support, relationship satisfaction, resiliency, past relationship experience...

Using the National Health Interview Survey 2015 data release, an analytic sample of 17,897 working U.S. adults in current paid employment were examined to determine if there was a relationship between not having paid sick leave and worry about finances. A series of nine indicators of financial worry were regressed on paid sick leave status with ten...

Background: Given the broader social contexts in which transgender people and their families live, the latter can be either an important source of support, or bring with them yet another source of discrimination. Whilst historically transgender people almost uniformly experienced discrimination from families of origin, recent research suggests that...

This article builds on prior research demonstrating that intensive faculty training in alcohol and other drug (AOD) identification and treatment methods can result in increases in AOD knowledge and teaching efficacy. We provide examples of how faculty participants in the Alcohol and Other Drugs Education Program have adapted their teaching in clini...

Paid sick leave is increasingly identified as a social justice issue having important implications for health and wellness; however, little is known about its relationship to mental health. Data from the 2015 cross section of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS; 2015) were used to examine the relationship between paid sick leave and psycholo...

This study focused on the retrospective accounts of perceptions of parental acceptance/rejection regarding their LGB sexual identity, as well as present perceptions of satisfaction and acceptance in their adult intimate relationships. Participants (n = 147) reported perceiving parental responses to be very accepting towards their LGB sexual identit...

Emotion has long been known to impact memory, with individuals generally showing heightened memory for emotional relative to neutral information. The mechanisms underlying this effect are still not clear, but the kinds of emotional material recalled by individuals may shed some light on this issue. The present investigation explored the type of emo...