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Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students' postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get 'cooled out' in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals play in the lives of disadvantaged students. Using four waves of longitudinal interviews, I examine the reasons why low-income women hold steady to their aspirations for college degrees over a three-and-a-half-year period. I argue that holding steady not only reflects rational expectations about future employment opportunities, but it also generates moral status in the face of marginalization and facilitates the navigation of personal relationships. I use the concept of an 'ambition imperative' to demonstrate how aspirations for college attainment are a means of asserting moral status and pursuing virtuous social membership. This article contributes to theories of aspirations and offers an alternative explanation of the institutional effects of community colleges in the lives of students.

The compounding effects of climate change and resource scarcity on human health require locally led, action-oriented solutions. Pressures on water, energy, and food systems are intensified by resource limitations, population growth, and migration. The Arab region faces some of the highest recorded temperatures and acute water stress, making locally driven climate-health solutions critical. Despite increasing global climate finance, significant gaps remain in mobilizing funds and building capacity among community organizations addressing these issues. The Global Center on Climate Change, Water, Energy, Food, and Health Systems (GC3WEFH), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), launched an innovative Pilot Grants Program in 2023. This paper explains the unique design and approach of the pilot program, which combines NIH review standards with grassroots empowerment and capacity building. The program operates as a “project/policy laboratory” utilizing a rigorous merit review process, a novel dual-tiered metrics framework, and dedicated capacity-building efforts, to produce actionable knowledge across its portfolio. By the conclusion of its third call, the program had received 20 total proposals and awarded 9 grants in Jordan, achieving an overall sanction rate of 45.0% and successfully turning broad climate, resource, and health services usage goals into concrete on-the-ground actions. Evaluation results demonstrate that this small-grant approach can achieve systemic results, such as a 60% reduction in agricultural water consumption and statistically significant improvements in clinical health outcomes among vulnerable populations. The findings suggest the program successfully encourages community participation, cultivates unique solutions to grassroots challenges, connects local efforts to national policies, and strengthens long-term organizational capacity of community organizations.

Addressing impacts on human health from climate change will require engaged communities capable of co‐creating actionable science. This is particularly the case in Jordan, one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change with a hot, dry climate and rapidly growing population. A key demographic for building capacity to address climate‐health challenges is youth. To engage Jordanian youth in developing knowledge and skills related to climate‐health science, the Global Center on Climate Change and Water Energy Food Health Systems (GC3WEFH) implemented The DataJam, an annual project‐based data science learning program and competition developed in the United States. The GC3WEFH enrolled 87 students from 21 schools in The DataJam Jordan. Fifty‐four students in teams of three completed 18 projects over a 2‐year period while 33 students started The DataJam but did not complete a project. The aim of the intervention was to build data science capacity to address issues at the intersection of climate and health. To explore the outcomes of this intervention, we used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to identify the primary determinants. This analysis revealed that the complexity of The DataJam and the work infrastructure of the implementation impacted communication across the intervention, which shaped the topics students researched and their use of data science. Importantly, the DataJam increased both the confidence and interest of students in engaging in climate change related challenges facing their communities. Therefore, The DataJam is a positive example of engaging youth through the international translation of a STEM learning program. Plain Language Summary Building young people's capacity to engage in science at the intersection of climate change and human health can contribute to knowledge and interventions that are more likely to be adopted and sustained. The Global Center on Climate Change and Water Energy Food Health Systems engaged Jordanian high school students using The DataJam, a project‐based data science learning program and competition developed in the United States. This study analyzed the effectiveness of The DataJam in Jordan for engaging youth in climate‐health science using data science. After showing projects tended not to focus on the intersection of climate change and health and some projects did not include data science, we employed the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Science to identify the aspects of the implementation that impacted the outcomes. We found the complexity of The DataJam and the organization of the intervention led to communication challenges throughout the process. Despite these challenges, students reported a positive experience that resulted in greater interest in climate‐health science and confidence in their ability to be engaged in their communities. Key Points Engaging youth in Jordan through informal STEM programs can increase their interest in and capacity for addressing climate‐health challenges The complexity and organization of an informal STEM program shapes communication throughout implementation, which can impact outcomes Implementation science frameworks can be used to identify intervention and contextual determinants of program outcomes

To better understand the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the care of patients with pulmonary hypertension, we conducted a retrospective cohort study evaluating health insurance status, healthcare access, disease severity, and patient reported outcomes in this population. Using the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Registry (PHAR), we defined and extracted a longitudinal cohort of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients from the PHAR's inception in 2015 until March 2022. We used generalized estimating equations to model the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on patient outcomes, adjusting for demographic confounders. We assessed whether insurance status modified these effects via covariate interactions. PAH patients were more likely to be on publicly‐sponsored insurance during the COVID‐19 pandemic compared with prior, and did not experience statistically significant delays in access to medications, increased emergency room visits or nights in the hospital, or worsening of mental health metrics. Patients on publicly‐sponsored insurance had higher healthcare utilization and worse objective measures of disease severity compared with privately insured individuals irrespective of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The relatively small impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on pulmonary hypertension‐related outcomes was unexpected but may be due to pre‐established access to high quality care at pulmonary hypertension comprehensive care centers. Irrespective of the COVID‐19 pandemic, patients who were on publicly‐sponsored insurance seemed to do worse, consistent with prior studies highlighting outcomes in this population. We speculate that previously established care relationships may lessen the impact of an acute event, such as a pandemic, on patients with chronic illness.

Although higher education scholars are increasingly exploring disparities within institutions, they have yet to examine how parental involvement contributes to social-class variation in students' experiences. We ask, what role do parents play in producing divergent college experiences for students from different class backgrounds? Relying on interviews with 41 families, including mothers, fathers, and their daughters, we find that affluent parents serve as a \"college concierge,\" using class resources to provide youth with academic, social, and career support and access to exclusive university infrastructure. Less affluent parents, instead, describe themselves as \"outsiders\" who are unable to help their offspring and find the university unresponsive to their needs. Our findings suggest that affluent parents distinguish their children's college experiences from those of peers, extending \"effectively maintained inequality\" beyond the K-12 education. Universities may be receptive of these efforts due to funding shifts that make recruiting affluent, out-of-state families desirable.

There is an extensive body of literature detailing the forces behind and experiences of alienation in a modern capitalist world. However, social scientific interest in alienation had become parochial and balkanized by the 1970s. To reconstruct a unifying theory of alienation that addresses general features of capitalism, such as compulsory growth and commodification, and particular phases like financialized capitalism, we begin with the notion of futurelessness. Futurelessness refers to a deficient relationship to the future in which people’s senses of possibility ossify, narrow, or dissipate. It may result from inclusion in and exclusion from capitalist mechanisms or processes. Moreover, processes of inclusion and exclusion may appear more voluntary or involuntary. With these general terms, we identify four manifestations of futurelessness in financial capitalism: commercial exhaustion, imaginative marginalization, therapeutic nowism, and pragmatic denialism. The conclusion addresses future-sustenance in an alienating world and the prospects of a more systemic and synthetic approach to alienation.

Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students' postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get \"cooled out\" in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals play in the lives of disadvantaged students. Using four waves of longitudinal interviews, I examine the reasons why low-income women hold steady to their aspirations for college degrees over a three-and-a-half-year period. I argue that holding steady not only reflects rational expectations about future employment opportunities, but it also generates moral status in the face of marginalization and facilitates the navigation of personal relationships. I use the concept of an \"ambition imperative\" to demonstrate how aspirations for college attainment are a means of asserting moral status and pursuing virtuous social membership. This article contributes to theories of aspirations and offers an alternative explanation of the institutional effects of community colleges in the lives of students.

The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Healthy Families, a family-based community intervention, in improving the knowledge, self-efficacy, and health behaviors of overweight/obese children and their families as well as to explore the lessons learned. Results showed families who completed the program had significant improvements for children and parents in areas such as nutrition knowledge and self-efficacy in making healthy eating choices as well as participating in physical activity. Additionally, families reported decreasing their intake of sugar-sweetened beverages. Participating families and community partners provided valuable lessons for other communities seeking to implement a similar program.

The role of higher education in the lives of individuals and the course of society is greater today than at any point in the past. Postsecondary credentials are required for many professions, and economies, from the local to the national, rely on colleges and universities to provide skilled labor. Higher education also gives access to socially-recognized, highly-valued identities. In this dissertation, I examine the meaning of higher education in the lives of 23 poor and working-class young adult women attending community college as they pursue social mobility and places as valued members of society. I examine the narratives that they tell and re-tell through four waves of life history interviews over a three-and-a-half year period from fall 2010 to spring 2014. By focusing on poor and working-class women in community college, I look at those students who face some of the greatest obstacles and least possibilities of attaining their degrees. At the same time, the consequences of failure, both socioeconomically and culturally, are especially severe for poor and working-class women. I show how the community college functions as a narrative hub that ties together broad cultural beliefs, personal biography, and institutionally-structured life stories. When the women in this study experienced delayed or blocked progress toward college and career attainment, they either held steady to their aspirations or engaged in a process of narrative revision. They did so not only out of a pragmatic pursuit of social mobility but also as a way to fulfill a cultural imperative to be ambitious. I argue that the ability of poor and working-class women to display ambition is shaped by the institutional resources they have access to. The community college’s open access structure and vocational character make ambitious storytelling possible, even when students make little or no progress toward completion. Outside of college, disadvantaged women may turn to institutions that allow for ambitious practices of self-improvement, such as religion or sport, or allow them to care for others, such as the family. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that higher education is as much a source of meaning and virtue as social mobility in today’s society.