Sarah Dow-FleisnerUniversity of British Columbia - Okanagan | UBC Okanagan · School of Social Work
Sarah Dow-Fleisner
PhD
About
21
Publications
3,119
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317
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
June 2021 - present
January 2018 - present
January 2016 - May 2017
Education
August 2013 - December 2017
Boston College
Field of study
- Social Work
August 2010 - May 2012
August 2003 - May 2007
Publications
Publications (21)
Background
Rural and remote communities faced unique access challenges to essential services such as healthcare and highspeed infrastructure pre-COVID, which have been amplified by the pandemic. This study examined patterns of COVID-related challenges and the use of technology among rural-living individuals during the first wave of the COVID-19 pan...
Background:
Technology holds great potential for promoting health equity for rural populations, who have more chronic illnesses than their urban counterparts but less access to services. Yet, more participatory research approaches are needed to gather community-driven health technology solutions. The purpose was to collaboratively identify and pri...
Globally, the rate of injection drug use has increased, leading to a rise in injection-related injuries, infections, disease transmission, and death. Safe consumption facilities (SCFs) were developed with the aim of reducing injection-related disease transmission and death. There is a rapidly growing body of literature related the individual and co...
Background
The use of e-cigarettes (vaping) among Indigenous youth is much higher than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts, which has raised the concerns of various Indigenous scholars and communities. To better understand the most salient constructs that influence Indigenous youth decision-making around vaping, we co-created a qualitative re...
Background:
To reduce person-to-person contact, the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a massive shift to virtual care. Defined as the use of technology (synchronous or asynchronous) to support communication between healthcare providers and patients, rural-urban differences in virtual are relatively unexplored.
Objective:
The two-fold purpose of the p...
Background: The use of e-cigarettes (vaping) among Indigenous youth is much higher than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts, which has raised the concerns of various Indigenous scholars and communities. To better understand the most salient constructs that influence Indigenous youth decision-making around vaping, we co-created a qualitative r...
Background
Promoting inclusive health and social care for rural populations requires new community-focused innovations, technological infrastructure, creative design thinking, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Technology holds great potential for promoting health equity for rural populations, who have more chronic illnesses than their urban coun...
Aims
Multiple social influences affect cannabis use in adolescents, including parental and peer cannabis use norms. However, the mechanisms of influence underlying these social influences remain unclear. Recent studies have suggested that cognitions about cannabis use and the effects of cannabis may mediate social influences. The current study expl...
Kinship foster care placements have become significantly more prevalent in both Canada and the United States. However, there are limited resources for child protection services (CPS) workers to assess the quality of the kinship caregiver placements. Although several measures exist to screen caregivers for general foster care, there are no instrumen...
BACKGROUND
The use of e-cigarettes, also known as vaping, has risen exponentially among North American youth in recent years and has become a critical public health concern. The marketing strategies used by e-cigarette companies have been associated with the uptick in use among youth, with video advertisements on TV and other electronic platforms b...
Background:
The use of e-cigarettes, also known as vaping, has risen exponentially among North American youth in recent years and has become a critical public health concern. The marketing strategies used by e-cigarette companies have been associated with the uptick in use among youth, with video advertisements on TV and other electronic platforms...
A sample of adoptive parents, including an oversampling of lesbian mothers (n = 125), was surveyed regarding their family’s school experiences related to adoption, satisfaction with how the school handled adoption-related issues, and their child’s experiences with teasing at school. Linear and logistic regression analyses showed that lesbian mother...
We tested the validity and measurement invariance of the Transracial Adoptive Parenting scale (TAPS) across sexual orientation with a nationwide sample of adoptive parents. Our study sample consisted of 737 heterosexual, 102 lesbian, and 64 gay adoptive parents from the Modern Adoptive Families (MAF) study, a cross-sectional survey. We conducted re...
Maternal depression is associated with negative outcomes in children, with less known about physical health outcomes. Poor child physical health is a robust predictor of negative outcomes across the life course. Thus, authors examined the association between maternal depression and child physical well-being, accounting for multiple risk and protect...
Mothers who receive or qualify for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program or have lower income are less likely to start and continue breastfeeding than their more advantaged counterparts. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires employers to provide break time and space to express breast milk and requires insurance comp...
National efforts have focused on improving adolescent substance use disorder (SUD) treatment outcomes, yet improvements remain modest. Because adolescents are noteworthy for heterogeneity in their clinical profiles, treatment might be enhanced by the identification of clinical subgroups for which interventions could be more effectively tailored. So...
Ensuring retention in longitudinal studies of individuals with substance use disorders (SUD) is a continual challenge for researchers. This study made several modifications to a highly intensive follow-up protocol (Scott, 2004), originally designed for adults with SUD, in order to adapt it to a group of adolescents in low-intensity outpatient SUD t...
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have proven to be cost-effective recovery resources for adults and also appear helpful for youth. However, anecdotal concerns about adolescents' safety at meetings have dampened enthusiasm regarding youth participation. Unfortunately, little information exists to evaluate such concerns. Outpati...
Substance-related terminology is often a contentious topic because certain terms may convey meanings that have stigmatizing consequences and present a barrier to treatment. Chief among these are the labels, “abuse” and “abuser.” While intense rhetoric has persisted on this topic, little empirical information exists to inform this debate. We tested...
Despite advances in the development of treatments for adolescents with substance use disorders (SUD), relapse remains common following an index treatment episode. Community continuing care resources, such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), have been shown to be helpful and cost-effective recovery resources among adults. Howe...
Projects
Projects (2)
The purpose of this project is to determine the relationships among organizational environment and approach to practice among delegated Indigenous child welfare agencies in British Columbia. This mixed methods study will assess the organizational climate and evaluate the relationship among agency climate and approach to practice. At its completion, this project will identify and describe a more complex and informative picture of the relationships among environment, practice, and outcomes. The findings and methodology of this study will also help advance the dialogue concerning factors related to promoting practice excellence.
The broad aim of this project is to better understand the biological, socio-environmental, and developmental factors that shape outcomes and pathways of health and wellbeing in the context of childhood adversity. The use of time-informed, multilevel, person-centred statistical analyses coupled with a narrative qualitative method presents a novel approach to examining the impact of childhood adversity on health and wellbeing outcomes and trajectories. Findings from this research program will be translated into actionable evidence for educators, healthcare professionals, and policymakers, and will be used to inform and develop screening protocols, prevention and early intervention programs, and policies that promote health equity for trauma-affected populations
