Community resilience and continuous challenges: A qualitative analysis of the functioning of communities in the aftermath of persistent and ordinary stressors

The study aimed at investigating the functioning of communities in the aftermath of continuous challenges and identifying standards for describing resilient paths based on the perspective of community members. A qualitative investigation was carried out in 11 territorial communities of Salento, in southern Italy. Fifty-two key informants were interviewed and interview transcripts were submitted to thematic content analysis through Atlas.Ti. Overall, the interviewees reported that their communities suffer from a varied set of complex and interrelated adverse circumstances that have increased their vulnerability. The respondents have a clear idea about the community strengths and weaknesses that either allow or impede adaptive responses, though they did not understand the latter in separation from the slow-onset events that have contributed to causing them. On the basis of findings, resilient paths facing continuous challenges can be described as trajectories of functioning allowing the communities to survive and progress through adaptive and maladaptive responses.

Local political climate and spill-over effects on refugee and migrant health: a conceptual framework and call to advance the evidence

The health of refugees and migrants is determined by a wide range of factors. Among these, the local political climate in the postmigration phase is an important determinant which operates at interpersonal and institutional levels. We present a conceptual framework to advance theory, measurement and empirical evidence related to the small-area factors which shape and determine the local political climate, as these may translate into variations in health outcomes among refugees, migrants and other marginalised population groups. Using the example of Germany, we present evidence of small-area variation in factors defining political climates, and present and discuss potential pathways from local political climates to health outcomes. We show that anti-immigrant and antirefugee violence is a Europe-wide phenomenon and elaborate how resilience of individuals, communities, and the health system may function as moderator of the effects of the local political climate on health outcomes. Building on a pragmatic review of international evidence on spill-over effects identified in other racialised groups, we present a conceptual framework which incorporates direct effects as well as 'spill-over' effects on mental health with the aim to spark further academic discussion and guide empirical analysis on the topic. After presenting and discussing methodological challenges, we call for collective efforts to build coalitions between social sciences, conflict and violence studies, political science, data science, social psychologists and epidemiology to advance theory, measurement, and analysis of health effects of local political climates.

Challenges, Opportunities, and Coping in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Jewish Communities around the World

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which lasted more than two years and included several waves, the present study focused on Jewish communities around the world, in order to understand the role of community during the pandemic. This study focused on the community mechanisms that helped community members to cope with the pandemic. To that end, between October 2021 and July 2022, in-person interviews were conducted with leaders and members of the following communities: Budapest, Hungary; Subotica, Serbia; Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; Vilna, Lithuania; Buenos Aires, Rosario, Salta, and Ushuaia in Argentina; and Mexico City and Cancun in Mexico. Each interview lasted between 45 min and 1.5 h. All of the interviews were audio-recorded and transcripts of those recordings were prepared. Three major themes emerged from the interviews: challenges, coping, and opportunities. Most of these themes were common to the different communities around the world. The findings of this work are discussed in terms of the concept of sense of community and resiliency theories.

Together through tough times: a qualitative study of community resilience to protect against mental health issues in the UK

Purpose

Living in an area experiencing economic and social disadvantage is a known risk factor to poor mental health and well-being. This paper aims to understand how some communities experiencing disadvantage appear to be more resilient to the enduring challenges they face and display better mental health outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative case study approach was used. Semi-structured interviews (total = 74) were undertaken remotely with residents (n = 39) and voluntary, community and social enterprise groups, community leaders and other local stakeholders (n = 35) in four case study areas. Data analysis was cross-case, thematic analysis. Community analysis workshops (n = 4) and resilience mapping workshops (n = 4) in each site corroborated emerging insights.

Findings

Four overlapping and interacting themes support community resilience: community hubs and local voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) networks; opportunities to participate and make connections within communities; open and supportive environments to talk about mental health and well-being; and community identities and collective narratives. Differences in access to these resources was a cross-cutting theme.

Originality/value

Community resilience can be understood in terms of the amount of resources – articulated in terms of capital – that communities can draw on in response to challenges, and how well these resources are mobilised. A thriving VCSE sector is important for community resilience in communities experiencing disadvantage as a mechanism for both sustainably building and mobilising community resources in the face of daily and enduring challenges.

What does community resilience mean in the context of trauma-informed communities? A scoping review

Several communities are implementing trauma-informed, community-level approaches focused on addressing/preventing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), yet most community resilience definitions from published articles are based on acute traumas. This scoping review aims to determine how community resilience is defined and operationalized within the context of chronic/complex traumas.

METHODS

We performed a rigorous, comprehensive literature search using multiple databases.

RESULTS

The 38 included articles addressed multiple types of chronic traumas, including historical trauma, poverty, minority stress, mass incarceration, and ACEs. A variety of definitions of community resilience were cited, several of which stressed the ability to thrive despite risk factors and the safety and wellbeing of residents. Few articles operationalized community resilience within the context of ACEs, suggesting significant gaps in the literature.

CONCLUSION

This review can serve as an important building block to develop expanded definitions of community resilience for chronic traumas and assist communities in promoting community-wide responses to ACEs.

Developing Community Disaster Resilience in the Lembang Fault Area, Indonesia: Lessons Learned from Japanese Experience

Having experienced large-scale disasters between 2004 and 2006, the fatalities due to large-scale disasters in 2018 in Indonesia were still high. In contrast, community disaster resilience (CDR) and disaster risk management (DRM) in Japan have been continuously improved. Thus, there is a need to develop CDR for supporting DRM in Indonesia by learning from the Japanese experience, particularly in a disaster-prone area without large-scale disaster experience. This research was a pilot project on the development of CDR in Indonesia. The case study was Lembang Fault area, which is a geologic hazard-prone area. People’s perception was collected using structured interviews, while demographic and local economic data were acquired from official statistical publications. Satellite images were utilized to acquire the imageries of natural and built environment, as well as land use/land cover and its changes, between 2019 and 2021. Based on CDR assessment in the Lembang Fault area, the levels of people’s participation and capacity on DRM were low. This may be caused by the low level of training and education, linking of social capital and past disaster experience, as well as the inability of the people to interpret the symbols in indigenous knowledge. Moreover, government interventions on DRM and land administration are required to develop CDR in the Lembang Fault area. Organized community development is expected rather than to solely involve universities and NGOs. Furthermore, strategies to develop economic resilience are needed to allow the community to bounce back from future disaster. Finally, baseline data should be collected and managed to develop DRM strategy and CDR.

The community resilience measurement throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond -an empirical study based on data from Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is widespread agreement in the field of public health that community resilience should be maintained and strengthened. However, there are significant differences in the pandemic prevention effects between different communities in different areas. To explore the main influencing factors on community resilience and the magnitude of their impact during the pandemic, this study collected 650 valid questionnaires from Shanghai, Wuhan and Chengdu by using the Communities Advancing Resilience Toolkit Assessment Survey (CART). Data collection was conducted from February to March 2020 when this three cities activated a Level One public health emergency response. The data were analyzed by using multiple linear regression analysis and structural equation model. Results indicate that: (1) Domains such as Information and Communication, and Connection and Caring scored higher, while Disaster Management, Resources and Transformative Potential scored lower; (2) A community got higher resilience scores if it took more effective measures to prevent and control the pandemic(Shanghai > Chengdu > Wuhan), people within the community participated more actively in disaster risk reduction activities and activities of volunteer responder groups, and people were more closely connected with the community; (3) Variables such as the participation in affiliated volunteer responder groups, and community disaster risk reduction activities exerted the biggest impact on community resilience. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a community-based, resilience-centered framework of community resilience in the post-pandemic era. This framework will strengthen a community's capacity to cope with disasters and risks.

What factors explain anger and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic? The case of Israeli society

BACKGROUND

What factors affected the levels of anger and emotional distress experienced during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic? We hypothesized that (1) sociodemographic factors and resiliency factors would partially explain psychological distress and anger, with stronger resiliency associated with lower levels of distress and anger; (2) women would report more trust in national leadership, as well as more psychological problems; (3) individuals of low socioeconomic status would report less resiliency, less trust in national leadership, and greater distress than individuals of higher socioeconomic status; and (4) hope would mediate the relationships between the other resiliency factors and both anger and distress.

AIM

To explore whether community resilience, hope, and trust in leaders were associated with lower levels of anger and emotional distress during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

For this observational study, data were gathered in Israel during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, just before the Jewish New Year (mid-September 2020), as a second lockdown was announced. Data were gathered from 636 Israeli adults, who were recruited by the Midgam research panel. The participants filled out self-reported questionnaires including one on state anger, the Brief Symptom Inventory as a measure of mental-health problems (i.e., somatization, depression, and anxiety), and questionnaires about trust in the state’s leaders, community resilience (CCRAM), and hope as measures of coping resources and resiliency. t-tests were used to explore differences between men and women and between those of lower and higher socioeconomic status. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was then used to examine whether and how the sociodemographic and resiliency variables explained state anger and psychological distress. A Sobel test was used to evaluate the possible effects of hope on community resilience and trust in leadership in the context of both distress and anger.

RESULTS

Our results revealed differences between women and men in terms of anger and mental-health problems, but not in terms of coping resources. Women reported higher levels of both anger and mental-health problems. Participants of lower socioeconomic status reported more mental-health problems, more anger, and greater trust in the state’s leaders; whereas those of higher socioeconomic status reported greater hope. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that the sociodemographic factors of gender, age, and socioeconomic status, as well as community resilience, trust in the state’s leaders, and hope explained mental health with a total of 19% of the variance and anger with a total of 33% of the variance. The Sobel tests showed that hope mediated the relationships between community resilience and mental health (z = 3.46, P < 0.001), community resilience and anger (z = 2.90, P < 0.01), and trust in leaders and anger (z = 3.26, P < 0.01), but did not affect the relationship between trust in leaders and mental health (z = 1.53, P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Personal and communal factors affect psychological distress. Personal resilience is an important factor that should be strengthened throughout life. Trust in leadership is important for citizens’ mental health.

Rural Winery Resiliency and Sustainability through the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the tourism industry worldwide, including the wine industry in the western U.S. due to mandated winery and tasting room closures, followed by restrictions on capacity and food- and drink-handling once wineries reopened. In California, tasting rooms were fully closed from mid-March to mid-May 2020 and could not have visitors indoors through to October 2020. Hence, this study examines the resiliency of wineries in minor California wine regions, including the challenges faced during the pandemic, strategies used to sustain their business, and the attributes of their operation which contributed to success. Data were collected through structured in-person interviews with five wineries in minor California wine regions, specifically Russian River Valley and Sierra Foothills. The four themes which emerged include: lifestyle business; market differentiation; direct marketing; and the effects of COVID-19. These wineries are primarily family-owned, which gives them the ability to control costs and make decisions rapidly. They did not have a large workforce or multiple layers of management, allowing them to pivot quickly to adjust to the regulatory environment. This study on rural winery resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic will assist rural tourism operations in dealing with social and economic shocks in the future.

Measuring the resilience of health systems in low- and middle-income countries: a focus on community resilience

The concept of community resilience has gained considerable attention in the global health discussions since the Ebola outbreak of West Africa in 2014–2015. However, there are no measurement models to quantify community resilience. Without measurement models, it is unclear how to test strategies for building community resilience or to describe their likely intended and unintended results and their impact on health outcomes. We propose a measurement model for community resilience with relevant constructs and indicators to measure these constructs. We conducted a scoping review, systematically searching, screening and selecting relevant articles from two bibliographic databases (PUBMED and Google Scholar) for literature using search terms such as “resilience”, “community resilience” and “health systems resilience”. We screened 500 papers, then completed a full text review of 112 identified as relevant based on their title and abstract. A total of 27 papers and reports were retained for analysis. We then aggregated and synthesised the various definitions of community resilience and the frameworks for understanding these definitions. We identified key constructs from these frameworks and organised these constructs into domains and sub-domains. We proposed indicators to capture aspects of these domains and sub-domains and operationalised these indicators as a measurement model for quantifying community resilience in health systems. We propose a model with 20 indicators to assess community resilience. These indicators tap into various constructs from different theoretical frameworks of community resilience and are useful for assessing the level of knowledge, financial resources, and human, social and physical capital that are needed (or lacking) to respond to any types of shock, including health shock at the community level. This is an initial attempt to describe a multilevel measurement model for quantifying community resilience. This model will help to guide the development and testing of strategies for strengthening community resilience and will require further work to assess its relevance, reliability and validity in different LMIC settings.

Community Self-Organisation from a Social-Ecological Perspective: ‘Burlang Yatra’ and Revival of Millets in Odisha (India)

In this paper, I focus on the revival of an Indigenous community seed festival known locally as Burlang Yatra (‘Indigenous Biodiversity Festival’) in the district of Kandhamal in Odisha (India). This annual event brings together millet farmers to share knowledge and practices, including exchange of Indigenous heirloom seeds. Such community seed festivals remain largely underappreciated (and underexplored). Investigating Burlang Yatra through a social-ecological lens allowed for a greater understanding of its capacity to build and strengthen relationships, adaptation, and responsibility, three key principles that together link the social and the ecological in a dynamic sense. These principles, driven by intergenerational participation and interaction as well as social learning, can be seen as fostering ‘social-ecological memory’ of millet-based biodiverse farming. The festival’s persistence and revival illustrate a form of grassroots self-organising that draws on values of an Indigenous knowledge system. Within a restorative context, it has the capacity to repair and restore cultural and ecological relationships that the community has with their own foods and practices. This paper offers a new understanding of community self-organising from a social-ecological perspective and particularly in a marginalised context as supporting the revitalisation of Indigenous food systems.

Exploring young people's emotional well-being and resilience in educational contexts: A resilient space?

The term 'resilience' is pervasive in narratives of young people's emotional well-being. However, the meaning it has for those it describes is perhaps less well understood. Resilience was investigated as part of an engagement exercise into health improvement commissioning in educational contexts in the South East of England. One hundred and nine young people in total were involved, and this article reports data collected from two areas that were explored, comprising a sub-set of 58 participants: emotional well-being and resilience (n = 23) and the whole school approach (n = 35). It was apparent that while not all participants engaged with the term 'resilience' itself, they nevertheless often adopted creative individual and collective strategies to protect and enhance their emotional well-being. Furthermore, participants reported a sense of resilience that arose from a shared sense of adversity that helped strengthen collective support and solidarity, thus supporting previous work on emergent collective resilience. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, along with a recommendation for more participatory research, so that young people can be more confident that their views are being considered within such exercises.

Representations of Hope, Goals, and Meaning From Lay Person’s Perspectives in Two African Contexts

In the rapidly expanding field of positive psychology, a core question is now what the relationships among various positive constructs are and how we can understand this in various contexts. We aimed to explore the possible nomological network linking the constructs hope, goals, and meaning from a bottom-up Africentric perspective in two African contexts (Ghana and South Africa) among samples of 18 emerging adults between the ages of 18 and 25 years in each context. Connotations of hope, goals, and meaning as experienced by participants were thematically analyzed and thereafter conceptually clustered. These clusters formed overlapping nodes indicating the nomological network among constructs. Apart from positive intrapersonal cognitive processes linking the main constructs, the fulfillment of various well-being needs, embedded-ness in horizontal and vertical relationships, intertwined understandings, and links across domains of life came to the fore as nodes linking the constructs hope, goals, and meaning in the current sample. Our findings further illustrated that African-centered perspectives on the interconnectedness of things through spirituality and relationships endorse positive psychology views that emphasize relational dimensions as crucial aspects of cognitive well-being.

Mixed Methods in Prostate Cancer Prevention and Service Utilization Planning: Combining Focus Groups, Survey Research, and Community Engagement

This article reports on the use of sequential and integrated mixed-methods approach in a focused population and small-area analysis. The study framework integrates focus groups, survey research, and community engagement strategies in a search for evidence related to prostate cancer screening services utilization as a component of cancer prevention planning in a marginalized African American community in the United States. Research and data analysis methods are synthesized by aggregation, configuration, and interpretive analysis. The results of synthesis show that qualitative and quantitative data validate and complement each other in advancing our knowledge of population characteristics, variable associations, the complex context in which variables exist, and the best options for prevention and service planning. Synthesis of findings and interpretive analysis provided two important explanations which seemed inexplicable in regression outputs: (a) Focus group data on the limitations of the church as an educational source explain the negative association between preferred educational channels and screening behavior found in quantitative analysis. (b) Focus group data on unwelcoming provider environments explain the inconsistent relationship between knowledge of local sites and screening services utilization found in quantitative analysis. The findings suggest that planners, evaluators, and scientists should grow their planning and evaluation evidence from the community they serve.

Community Capitals as Community Resilience to Climate Change: Conceptual Connections

In the last few decades, disaster risk reduction programs and climate initiatives across the globe have focused largely on the intimate connections between vulnerability, recovery, adaptation, and coping mechanisms. Recent focus, however, is increasingly paid to community resilience. Community, placed at the intersection between the household and national levels of social organization, is crucial in addressing economic, social, or environmental disturbances disrupting human security. Resilience measures a community’s capability of bouncing back—restoring the original pre-disaster state, as well as bouncing forward—the capacity to cope with emerging post-disaster situations and changes. Both the ‘bouncing back’ and ‘moving forward’ properties of a community are shaped and reshaped by internal and external shocks such as climate threats, the community’s resilience dimensions, and the intensity of economic, social, and other community capitals. This article reviews (1) the concept of resilience in relation to climate change and vulnerability; and (2) emerging perspectives on community-level impacts of climate change, resilience dimensions, and community capitals. It argues that overall resilience of a place-based community is located at the intersection of the community’s resilience dimensions, community capitals, and the level of climate disruptions.

Resettlement experiences and resilience in refugee youth in Perth, Western Australia

BACKGROUND

In Australia, the two major pathways of refugee entry are the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees resettlement programme and irregular maritime arrivals (IMAs) seeking asylum. The Australian Government's policies towards IMAs since July 2013 are controversial, uncompromising and consistently harsh, with asylum seekers held in detention centres for prolonged periods. Refugees and asylum seekers have distinct and unique stressors that make resettlement difficult.

METHODS

This exploratory study examines resettlement experiences for refugee youth in Western Australia using the psychosocial conceptual framework and qualitative methods. Focus group discussions and key informant interviews were undertaken with verbatim transcripts analysed using thematic analysis to identify themes.

RESULTS

Themes documented that language and its impact, and experience with education, health, and social activities, support structures provided to youth and supporting future aspirations as critical to successful resettlement. This exploratory study contributes to developing a broader understanding of the resettlement experiences of refugee youth, drawing on their current and past experiences, cultural differences and mechanisms for coping.

CONCLUSION

Fluency in English language, especially spoken, was a facilitator of successful resettlement. Our results align with previous studies documenting that support programs are vital for successful resettlement. Although faced with immense difficulties refugee youth are resilient, want to succeed and have aspirations for the future. Strategies and recommendations suggested by refugee youth themselves could be used for developing interventions to assist successful resettlement.

South African, urban youth narratives: Resilience within community

South African youth in low-income, urbanized communities are exposed to high levels of daily stressors, which increase their risk to negative outcomes. Resiliency can provide avenues for youth to transcend adversity and may contribute to their positive development. To provide a deeper understanding of the pathways that adolescents use to overcome adversity, this paper examined future aspirations of South African youth, and how these aspirations were connected to resiliency factors framed by their lived context. A phenomenological approach was used to explore the perceptions of high school students. Fourteen focus groups with girls and boys (N=112) were conducted. Data was analyzed using a thematic approach. Discussions of the harsh conditions undermining the community's future highlighted opportunities for improvement. Community connectedness, hope and altruism were prevalent in youth's responses and could be used to facilitate community and individual resiliency. Our overall findings have important implications for positive youth development efforts.

Family Resilience Resources in Coping With Child Sexual Abuse in South Africa

The aim of this qualitative study was to identify resources of family resilience that help families cope with child sexual abuse. Data were collected from a purposeful sample of parents representing nine poor families living in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The narratives of the participants were analyzed thematically. The results indicate that the families, despite adverse situations, utilized internal and external resilience resources. Internal resources were the parents' relationship with their children, their own emotional functioning and attitudes, the children's ability to cope with the abuse, boundaries in the family, insight into their children's emotional needs, and sibling relationships. External family resources were the support of extended family members, friends, and a local community-based nonprofit organization working with child sexual abuse and schools. The empowering role of the identified resources for family resilience should be enhanced in interventions, while future studies could further explore these aspects in families confronted with child sexual abuse.

Community resilience and sense of coherence as protective factors in explaining stress reactions: comparing cities and rural communities during missiles attacks

Based on the salutogenic theory, the aim of this study was to examine sense of coherence and communal resiliency as related to stress reactions during missile attacks. Data were gathered in August 2011 while missiles were being shot from Gaza to the Negev communities in Israel from approximately 150 participants, aged 15-85. Participants lived in cities and different types of small rural villages. Self reported questionnaires were administered via the internet and included demographic data, coping resource of sense of coherence and community resiliency as coping resources, as well as state anxiety, state anger and psychological distress as stress reaction outcomes. Overall, the participants in our study reported strong personal and communal resources and relatively low levels of stress reactions. Personal and communal resources were linked negatively to the different stress reactions. However, some differences emerged when we compared participants from different types of communities. The most resilient group was composed of people who lived in the rural and communal communities. Differences also emerged on patterns of relationships between the community resource and state anxiety. While among the rural citizens, community resilience was strongly linked to anxiety, no relationships were revealed in the urban citizens group.

An argument against the focus on community resilience in public health

Background

It has been suggested that Public Health professionals focus on community resilience in tackling chronic problems, such as poverty and deprivation; is this approach useful?

Discussion

Resilience is always i) of something ii) to something iii) to an endpoint, as in i) a rubber ball, ii) to a blunt force, iii) to its original shape. “Community resilience” might be: of a neighbourhood, to a flu pandemic, with the endpoint, to return to normality. In these two examples, the endpoint is as-you-were. This is unsuitable for some examples of resilience. A child that is resilient to an abusive upbringing has an endpoint of living a happy life despite that upbringing: this is an as-you-should-be endpoint. Similarly, a chronically deprived community cannot have the endpoint of returning to chronic deprivation: so what is its endpoint? Roughly, it is an as-you-should-be endpoint: to provide an environment for inhabitants to live well. Thus resilient communities will be those that do this in the face of challenges. How can they be identified?

One method uses statistical outliers, neighbourhoods that do better than would be expected on a range of outcomes given a range of stressors. This method tells us that a neighbourhood is resilient but not why it is. In response, a number of researchers have attributed characteristics to resilient communities; however, these generally fail to distinguish characteristics of a good community from those of a resilient one. Making this distinction is difficult and we have not seen it successfully done; more importantly, it is arguably unnecessary.

There already exist approaches in Public Health to assessing and developing communities faced with chronic problems, typically tied to notions such as Social Capital. Community resilience to chronic problems, if it makes sense at all, is likely to be a property that emerges from the various assets in a community such as human capital, built capital and natural capital.

Summary

Public Health professionals working with deprived neighbourhoods would be better to focus on what neighbourhoods have or could develop as social capital for living well, rather than on the vague and tangential notion of community resilience.

Barriers to caregiver involvement in a child safety intervention in South Africa

Injuries are a global threat to children’s health and are disproportionately prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the rates of childhood injuries, research into prevention and the community and family conditions required for such interventions have been largely under-researched. This article reviews international work highlighting caregiver involvement in the implementation of interventions in a number of sectors, including the health, education, and safety domains. This work, based largely on experiences in high-income countries, indicates that there are considerable challenges inhibiting caregiver involvement in such interventions. This article explores caregiver understandings of the personal, familial, and contextual barriers to their participation in child safety initiatives. It highlights the obstacles to involvement in a community-centred child safety promotion intervention that was implemented in a low-income setting in the Western Cape. A narrative approach was employed with study data captured in individual interviews and analysed using guidelines for conducting narrative analysis. In total, 11 caregivers were interviewed. Caregiver understandings of the impediments to greater involvement in safety interventions included the multifaceted nature of their personal and social difficulties. These included the prioritisation of work opportunities; conflict and estrangement from partners, family, and the community; and adverse living conditions. In such situations, many reported constrained personal choices and disengagement from many aspects of community relationships. Despite this stance, caregivers recognised the community connectedness, belonging, and responsibility needed to achieve a safer and healthier community.

Resilience: thoughts on the value of the concept for critical gerontology

This article examines the utility of the concept of resilience to the field of critical gerontology. Resilience is an increasingly popular concept within the social sciences. We explore some key ideas about individual and social resilience from varied fields, and propose new ways to conceptualise these in relation to resilience in later life. This article examines the history of the concept of resilience; explores some of the diverse ways that gerontologists are attempting to apply it to later life; and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of using resilience as a conceptual framework within critical ageing research. We also suggest ways of conceptualising resilience and ageing, highlighting the different scales of resilience that impact on the ability of older people to negotiate adversity, and some key areas of resilience relevant to later life. The example of mobility resilience is used to illustrate how different scales of resilience operate within an area of resilience central to the ageing experience. Finally, some key principles for the use of resilience within critical gerontology are outlined, providing guidance on how to maximise the potential of the concept whilst avoiding some of the limitations associated with its historical usage.

A Critical Review of Instruments Assessing Characteristics of Community

Community development is critical in South African and other low- to middle-income contexts characterised by unemployment, violence, poverty and poor infrastructure. The current asset-based trend in community research emphasises constructive community development and change through the mobilisation of existing and unrecognised community resources and skills. Following this trend we critically examine the conceptual soundness and logic of asset-based community assessment instruments. We give particular attention to measures of social capital, social cohesion, community resilience, and sense of community. Our review reveals that while the asset-based approaches embody an important shift away from the deficits orientation, their associated instruments, which bring discursive impositions, are marked by conceptual and operational ambiguities, troubling assumptions about community and uneasy power dynamics in their implementation. We suggest that such challenges may be addressed through the employment of measures that draw on both quantitative and qualitative paradigms, and that assume participatory strategies to implementation.

Perceptions of gender-based violence among South African youth: implications for health promotion interventions

Gender-based violence is a widespread problem in South Africa. Past structural inequities have created a climate conducive to violence against women. As an initial step toward developing a health promotion program, we conducted exploratory formative research to examine the barriers that affect the health and well-being of youth. Fourteen focus groups (nine with girls and five with boys) were conducted with 112 adolescents in a racially mixed community on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. We utilized grounded theory and thematic analysis to examine the data. The impact of poverty, ubiquitous gendered violence, transactional sex and unsafe recreational spaces emerged as the major themes. The experiences of youth were consumed by issues of safety rather than the pursuit of other developmentally appropriate markers. Our findings suggest that health promotion programs should create safe spaces for youth and opportunities to critically question the assumptions and manifestations of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the findings indicate that there is a strong need for multi-sectorial interventions directed at many levels to prevent gender-based violence.

The Determinants of Family Resilience among Families in Low- and Middle-Income Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review

Resilience research has traditionally revolved around individual risk and protective factors that enable people to succeed in spite of adverse circumstances. More recently, the scope of resilience research has expanded into the interpersonal realm, giving rise to constructs such as family resilience (FR). In this systematic literature review, we identify the empirically validated determinants of family resilience, with particular reference to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Twelve databases were searched for relevant peer-reviewed publications from 1991 to 2010. A review of the findings revealed several familial and social resilience-building factors for families in LMICs. We discuss these findings in relation to findings from better-resourced contexts and provide recommendations for future research.

Towards the Development of a Responsive, Social Science-informed, Critical Public Health Framework on Male Interpersonal Violence

Emerging out of a larger study whose main focus was to identify the risk and protective factors in male interpersonal violence, and based on analysis of local and global empirical and theoretical literature, the main aim of this article is to develop a conceptual foundation for understanding and preventing male interpersonal violence in South Africa within the context of responsive local manifestation and dynamics of male violence. The conceptual foundation developed has been informed by both public health and social science perspectives. The impetus for the development of a conceptual foundation is not only the scale of the problem of violence in the country but, more importantly, the urgent need for a theoretically sound, locally-grounded and better-integrated understanding of male interpersonal violence and violence generally. The article describes violence in a global context before turning to violence in South Africa. Then it briefly looks at different theoretical approaches on violence before focusing on the public health approach to violence generally, and male interpersonal violence more specifically. Next it describes the ecological framework, given that this perspective tends to accompany the public health studies in violence. A critical appraisal of this approach is then offered. Finally, the article attempts to bring together these disparate perspectives in the process of developing a locally responsive, social science-informed critical public health conceptual framework on male interpersonal violence, drawing on and including a focus on the political, economic and social history of South Africa.

Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness

Communities have the potential to function effectively and adapt successfully in the aftermath of disasters. Drawing upon literatures in several disciplines, we present a theory of resilience that encompasses contemporary understandings of stress, adaptation, wellness, and resource dynamics. Community resilience is a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity. Community adaptation is manifest in population wellness, defined as high and non-disparate levels of mental and behavioral health, functioning, and quality of life. Community resilience emerges from four primary sets of adaptive capacities--Economic Development, Social Capital, Information and Communication, and Community Competence--that together provide a strategy for disaster readiness. To build collective resilience, communities must reduce risk and resource inequities, engage local people in mitigation, create organizational linkages, boost and protect social supports, and plan for not having a plan, which requires flexibility, decision-making skills, and trusted sources of information that function in the face of unknowns.

Substance use and multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa

The aims of the study were to examine the relationship between multiple victimisation and drug use, and the role of drug use and other intra-personal, peer, parental and environmental factors in predicting multiple victimisation among adolescents in South Africa. A cross-sectional design was employed. The participants comprised 1474 male and female adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years, from Durban and Cape Town. They completed questionnaire measures assessing demographic characteristics; self, peer and parental drug use; self and peer delinquency; parental child-centredness and rules; and community drug availability and exposure to violence on television. A measure of multiple victimisation assessed whether or not the respondents had experienced two or more different types of violence in their lifetime. There was a significant association between frequency of tobacco, alcohol and marijuana use and multiple victimisation. Significant predictors of multiple victimisation in multiple logistic regression analyses were variables within intra-personal, peer, parental and environmental domains. Victimisation prevention programmes in South Africa should be comprehensive and target adolescents' drug use as well as their other psychosocial risk factors.