Leaanne Derigne

Florida Atlantic University | FAU · School of Social Work

Paid sick leave is an active health policy consideration. Publicly and privately funded datasets have been used to evaluate paid sick leave in relation to business, employment, and health outcomes. These findings have informed 40 states and localities that have passed legislation since 2006 that requires paid sick leave to be available to certain e...

Although the foreclosure crisis is considered over, some areas of the U.S. continue to suffer from high foreclosure rates. This research presents findings from in-depth interviews conducted with 18 service providers who worked with families to prevent their foreclosures in Cleveland, Ohio. The research focused on better understanding the landscape...

Vigorous legislative activity both for and against paid sick leave has occurred over the last decade. Although a compelling body of evidence suggests that paid sick leave supports personal and public health goals, a notable barrier in opposition to paid sick leave is apprehension about the potential short-term and long-term harms to business. This...

Background and Objectives: Building on opportunity cost theory and an understanding of how gender impacts household labor decisions, this study examines how family net worth may be impacted by three variables (having a work-limiting health condition, caregiving inside the home, caregiving outside of the home) while controlling for demographic and e...

This study describes findings of a phenomenological study of Black women’s experiences with a community-based perinatal support organization based in Cleveland, Ohio. Twenty-five women participated in interviews after their babies were born about how the organization in general, and perinatal support professionals (PSPs) in particular supported the...

Using a nationally representative sample of N=3,659 adults (mean age 55.6 in 2016) from the 2008, 2012, and 2016 rounds of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we examine the impact of work-limiting health conditions, caregiving, and the length of time spent in a caregiving role inside and outside the home on total family net worth. Repe...

Having asthma is a chronic condition that requires both acute and preventive care as a vital component of asthma action plans. This study looks at how having access to paid sick leave days may be important to adherence to asthma action plans. Does having paid sick days facilitate preventive care, help people avoid acute asthma incidents, reduce the...

The purpose of this study was to conduct an exploratory qualitative study of the impact of foreclosure on health. Twenty-nine interviews were conducted with people who had children under the age of 18 years at the time of the foreclosure. Interviews explored perspectives on the foreclosure experience, including factors that led to the foreclosure,...

This study explores the extent to which teen participants in a youth development program had a greater empowerment self-connectedness, intrapersonal, and interpersonal skills after participating in the program. Findings from 2 years of a youth development program in East Cleveland, Ohio, are reported. A collaborative health navigator model was used...

Objective: This study examines links between paid sick leave benefits and sleep as an indicator of well-being. Methods: Using data from 12,780 employed adult US workers in the 2018 National Health Interview Survey, the relationship between paid sick leave and sleep was explored while controlling for demographic and health status variables. Resu...

Vigorous legislative activity is taking place regarding paid sick leave in the United States. Most existing research measures paid sick days autonomously without also considering other benefits such as flexible work and paid vacation. This descriptive study of a nationally representative sample of 4428 adult male workers finds 77.1% of workers have...

Using a nationally representative sample from the 2012 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study evaluates the retirement savings of 994 older male US workers (ages 47–55) by their access to flextime, paid sick leave and vacation time. After controlling for 12 demographic, education, household, and work-related variables, when measured dich...

There is growing momentum toward mandating paid sick leave benefits in countries without comprehensive social insurance programs. The goal of these mandates is to protect public health and provide employees with ways to manage health and caregiving responsibilities. In an effort to inform the discussion this article reviews all the scholarly eviden...

As the US population ages, more workers will be called upon to provide care for older relatives and friends, often during their prime earning years. The National Alliance for Caregiving reports that 70% of employed caregivers of both older adults and family members with disabilities adjusted their work to manage caregiving responsibilities leading,...

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...

Climate change is acknowledged as being a crucial determinant of public health. The United States is experiencing an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters as a result of climate change activity, influencing the ways federal, state, and local governments are addressing the growing issue. Individuals who are vulnerable to the e...

Secondary data analysis on the 2015 National Health Interview Survey was conducted to determine if having paid sick leave increases the odds of being able to afford specific health care goods and services, and not having access to paid sick leave increases the odds of being in poverty, being food insecure and having elevated medical costs among a r...

Nearly a third of all U.S. workers, primarily lower-paid employees, do not have paid sick leave benefits, prompting some lawmakers to consider mandating paid sick leave for all U.S. employees so workers can access timely health care without lost wages. A representative sample of 19,537 workers in current paid employment was examined, searching for...

Objective: This study analyzes the relationship between number of paid sick days and reported preventive health care service usage among older US workers. Methods: Using a 2014 cross-section of 3,235 US workers age 49-57 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study is the first to measure paid sick leave as an ordinal variable in a...

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...

Attributions about religious traditions and their perceived openness to mindfulness are considered in this exploratory research. A Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist vignette character becomes interested in mindfulness. Using a general linear model, 11 items explored how the character’s family would be expected to react. Two items showed signifi...

Over one in five households with children has at least one child with a special health care need (CSHCN). Child health caregiving can bleed into paid work time. This research analyzes what factors influence work decisions (who reduces work and by how much) in married-couple families with CSHCN. This article uses data from the Medical Expenditure Pa...

Managing work and health care can be a struggle for many American workers. This paper explored the relationship between having paid sick leave and receiving preventive health care services, and hypothesized that those without paid sick leave would be less likely to obtain a range of preventive care services. In 2016, cross-sectional data from a sam...

The ways in which teenagers understand their social environments can be important for social service providers to understand. A cognitive anthropological approach grounded in cultural consensus theory was used to investigate teenagers and social and health service providers in a pilot study in East Cleveland, Ohio (N = 28). The qualitative method o...

Young people are often challenged to navigate the complex relationship that exists between educational attainment and substance misuse. Indeed, an interesting contradiction exists in the usefulness of college in mitigating substance use disorders. Although college attendance is an important predictor of future financial success and general well-bei...

Paid sick leave is an important employer-provided benefit that helps people obtain health care for themselves and their dependents. But paid sick leave is not universally available to US workers. Little is known about paid sick leave and its relationship to health behaviors. Contrary to public health goals to reduce the spread of illness, our findi...

Area probability sampling via U.S. postal addresses was used to select households from seven high poverty U.S. metropolitan areas. In person and telephone interviews with one adult household member were used to determine the odds of delaying or failing to fill a needed prescription for families with a child member with a limiting health condition....

Food insecurity in US households with children with limiting health conditions was compared to households with children without limiting health conditions, controlling for demographic va-riables. Multivariable logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratios. Data from the 2008-2011 Making Connections Survey (N = 1940) of households with c...

The National Association of Social Workers promotes legislative advocacy through Lobby Days throughout the country. Yet legislative advocacy can be an under-taught and underutilized skill set for social work students. this article describes a variety of pedagogical models and strategies that social work programs can employ to prepare students for l...

While HIV shows no discrimination, the Haitian American community is overrepresented among groups affected by HIV/AIDS and yet remains underserved in health care and social services. The purpose of this study is to explore the met and unmet health care needs of Haitian Americans living with HIV/AIDS. This study reports the findings of an in-depth q...

Over 10 million children in the United States have special health care needs (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2008). Parents struggle to afford needed health care and wrestle with the dual responsibilities of caregiving and employment. Researchers from a variety of disciplines, health care, and social science, in particular, are analyzi...

We examined key factors that affect out-of-pocket medical expenditures per $1000 of household income for children with special health care needs (CSHCN) with a broad range of conditions, controlling for insurance type and concentrating on the potentially moderating role of the medical home. A Heckman selection model was used to estimate whether the...

Social work students enter the field of social work for many reasons—from wanting to become clinicians to wanting to advocate for a more socially just world. Social policy classes can be the ideal courses to provide instruction on conducting research on current policy issues. Teaching students about policy advocacy can lead to a class rich with pra...

Despite the centrality of the construct in the field of alcohol and other drug (AOD) addiction, denial remains poorly conceptualized. One reason for this narrow conceptualization is the recent unilateral devotion to the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). In an effort to demonstrate denial's theoretical complexity, the TTM and five additional intuitively...

One in five U.S. households with children has at least one child with a special health care need (USDHHS, 2004). Like most parents, those with children with special health care needs struggle to balance child-rearing responsibilities with employment demands. This research examines factors affecting married parents' and single-mother's employment ch...

Parents of children with long-term emotional or behavioral conditions often struggle to access and afford mental health services for their children. This article examines the parent-reported reasons for unmet mental health needs in children using the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs, specifically investigating whether insu...

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of unmet mental health needs in children identified by parents as having long-term emotional and behavioral problems, to identify the characteristics of these children, and to evaluate the influence of health insurance status and type on the odds of reporting unmet mental health needs. We used...