Tag: David Strauser

KCH professors get funding to help workers with disabilities transition out of subminimum wage jobs

Oct. 22, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

David Strauser and John Kosciulek received funding to help workers with disabilities transition out of subminimum wage jobs.

The idea of a subminimum wage—enacted in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act—was originally intended to serve as a transition for the large number of soldiers with disabilities returning from war. However, that classification has become permanent for many workers with disabilities.

The U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Administration Disability Innovation Fund is seeking to improve access to better-paying jobs for individuals with disabilities, and a project from two Illinois faculty members was among those recently funded.

David Strauser and John Kosciulek, both professors in the Dept. of Kinesiology and Community Health within the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, received funding for their project, “From Subminimum Wage to Competitive Integrated Employment for Illinoisans with Disabilities: An Innovative & Collaborative Project Partnership (SWTCIE Illinois).”

According to the Strauser and Kosciulek, SWTCIE Illinois will increase opportunities for Illinoisans with disabilities to transition from subminimum wage employment to competitive integrated employment (CIE) and redirect to CIE those individuals contemplating subminimum wage employment for the first time.

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education—Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) through the Illinois Division of Rehabilitation Services in the amount of $13,943,946 for five years from October 2022 to September 2027.

Competitive integrated employment ensures that workers are compensated at or above the minimum wage, and allows both workers with and without disabilities to receive the same benefits and wages for performing the same duties, as well as being given the same opportunities for advancement.

The KCH professors said their first step will be to work with the Illinois Division of Rehabilitation Service and 14(c) organizations in Illinois to develop a new vocational rehabilitation service model that enables individuals with disabilities to transition from sub-minimum wage jobs to CIE. A 14(c) organization is one that has obtained federal government authorization to pay subminimum wages to workers with disabilities that impair their productivity in the work they perform.

The project’s main goals are to expand opportunities for Illinoisans with disabilities to obtain high-quality CIE that leads to economic security and assist and encourage employers in Illinois to fully include individuals with disabilities in their workforce.

Meanwhile, 14(c) organizations will benefit from their involvement in SWTCIE Illinois because they will be provided resources, training, and special expertise to help the organization assist individuals with disabilities to transition from sub-minimum wage jobs to CIE.

About these grants, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said, “President Biden always says that a good-paying job is about more than a paycheck, it’s about dignity, and that’s why we can no longer accept a status quo in which so many individuals with disabilities are segregated from the workforce and relegated into poverty-wage jobs that offer no pathway to higher earnings. These grants will support innovative efforts underway across the country to provide educational opportunities to youth and adults with disabilities so they can secure better-paying jobs, build economic security, and lead more fulfilling, independent lives.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Two new grants aimed at improving outcomes for students with disabilities

Oct. 02, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The grants will be focused on providing training to Special Education teachers and Vocational Rehabilitation counselors across Illinois

Two new grants to researchers in the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois will fund programs aimed at improving post-school employment outcomes for students with significant disabilities.

The first grant, funded by the Illinois State Board of Education, is for a five-year, $5 million collaboration between the College of Education and AHS. Kinesiology and Community Health professor David Strauser, in collaboration with College of Education professor Stacy Dymond, received funding for the Center on Transition and Work. The Center will offer state-wide training and technical assistance to school personnel, rehabilitation counselors, and families to improve post-school employment outcomes for students with significant disabilities (e.g., intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, autism).

Strauser, Dymond and KCH professor John Kosciulek were also awarded a Vocational Training Grant. This project, funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services and Division of Vocational Rehabilitation for $1.5 million over five years, will provide statewide training to vocational rehabilitation counselors who prepare individuals with disabilities for employment.

Strauser said the two grants “complement each other and will work together to increase post-high school employment outcomes for youth and young adults with disabilities in Illinois.”

Strauser said the grants will be focused on providing training to Special Education teachers and Vocational Rehabilitation counselors across Illinois.

“The training will focus on providing training to front-line professionals that will enhance their skills related on preparing youth and young adults for employment after they leave high school.”

Podcasts, videos and research briefs will be among the materials created and made publicly available to help young adults with disabilities and chronic health conditions transition to work life, he said.

Strauser hopes to begin training as soon as early next year, and is searching for sites for the Center on Transition and Work, which will be somewhere on the UIUC campus.

As far as the populations the grants will help, Strauser said the project funded by the ISBE will focus on severe intellectual, psychiatric, and physical disabilities, while the vocational training project will focus on all types of disabilities and chronic health conditions.

Strauser said the grants fulfill the land grant mission of UIUC by providing research and training directed at enhancing the lives of Illinoisans with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

“We will also be able to conduct direct practice-based research that will provide valuable information to Illinois, the country and the world regarding effective practices and strategies that can improve the career development and employment of youth and young adults with disabilities.”

Strauser and Kosciulek also received a grant for their Rehabilitation Services Administration Quality Employment Outcomes project. Strauser is the principle investigator on the project—which also includes the University of Wisconsin, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Kentucky. The objectives are to increase the number of eligible applicants to State vocational rehab programs; to increase engagement of eligible applicants in service to promote participation in services throughout the tenure of their Individualized Employment Plans; to increase the number of employers hiring and retaining persons with disabilities in their workforce; and to increase the Employment Rate indicator, as compared to each programs’ historical data and national trends. The project is funded for $2.15 million over five years.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Expert Q&A: David Strauser, COVID-19 and Marginalized Workers

May 11, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The College of Applied Health Sciences has experts in many areas that have been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Periodically we will ask these experts about how their areas of expertise have been impacted and what we can expect in a post-COVID-19 world. Today, we ask David Strauser, a professor in the department of Kinesiology and Community Health, about how marginalized workers are affected by COVID-19 workplace conditions.

According to David Strauser, for marginalized workers, the stress does not come from losing work, but instead from having to work during a pandemic. (Stock image)

Q: How much more difficult is a loss of work due to an act of God like this on the so-called marginalized worker? They can’t get unemployment or other services.

A: Loss of work is always hard for individuals because it creates financial insecurity, a sense of personal uncertainty, and lack of control. This is especially true when individuals do not see the economic change coming (e.g., others being laid off, talks of downsizing). Workers who are marginalized are at a significant disadvantage because they do not have, or lack access to, the material and instrumental resources that other workers may have access to that allows them to cope with being furloughed or terminated due to lack of work. In addition, the environment in which many marginalized workers work and reside are under consistent personal and environmental stressors that limit the individual’s co-workers, family and community from providing the much-needed emotional support to manage the situation. 

The passage of the CARES Act attempts to address the financial issues with unemployment by expanding eligibility for unemployment, supplementing typical unemployment amount by $600 per week through July 31, 2020, and providing an additional 13 weeks of coverage from 26 weeks to 39 weeks. In Illinois, the maximum unemployment amount is $471 per week. Under the CARES Act, that amount increases to $1,071 ($471 + $600).  However, few marginalized workers will come close to getting that amount. In Illinois, unemployment is based on 47 percent of an individual’s total two quarters of earnings divided by 26 weeks. If an individual makes $30,000 per year ($15,000 for 2 quarters), his or her unemployment benefit would be $271 per week based on 47 percent of the two-quarter earnings ($7,050) divided by 26 weeks. The CARES Act provides an additional $600 per week, increasing the weekly benefit to $871 per week through July 31, 2020.  

However, it is important to note that for many marginalized workers, the stress does not come from losing work, but instead from having to work. Many marginalized workers are considered necessary employees (e.g., janitorial/cleaning, Certified Nursing Assistants, Nursing Home Aides). As a result, they must report to work and work in situations where they are at increased risk of being exposed to COVID-19. Health care technicians and those working in the meat-packing and food-processing plants across the country provide a great example of this. We are on the verge of a meat shortage in the country because so many packing plants have had to close due to workers being sick with COVID-19. In addition to increased health risk, with schools being closed and reduced access to childcare, many workers are dealing with how to manage younger children who are left at home. Finally, many marginalized workers are in the group of individuals who have secondary health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, that place them at increased risk for adverse effects COVID-19. Lack of access to appropriate health care also increases stress.

Q: Where can workers turn when they lose gig jobs or employment that doesn’t come with benefits?

A: In Illinois, gig workers will have access to unemployment benefits starting May 11, 2020. The delay on getting these funds to gig workers will likely place individuals in significant financial distress and force them to make hard choices between putting food on the table or paying rent.  As outlined above, when individuals become eligible, funds may not be enough to provide financial relief.  Individuals may also encounter difficulty navigating the system. With many nonprofits under financial pressure as well, programs designed to help individuals navigate governmental programs may no longer be available or may operate at a reduced capacity, further increasing stress on the unemployed. 

Q: Many marginalized workers cannot work from home. What can they do?

A: Many marginalized workers cannot work at home because they have been identified as necessary workers, placing them at increased risk for becoming infected. For many of the jobs held by marginalized workers, social distancing is not feasible and the work environment does not allow for many of the CDC guidelines to be implemented. Many of these workers also depend on public transportation, where social distancing can prove difficult. 

Q: Will those workers with comorbidities have more trouble re-entering the work force because of insurance concerns?

A: Access to health insurance and appropriate health care is a significant issue impacting many workers in the U.S., especially those working in low wage positions. COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on individuals with co-morbid health conditions, such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. A bigger potential issue emerging is further reduced physical capacity for those individuals with co-morbid conditions from the residual effects of being infected and recovering from COVID-19. The combination of working in positions with increased risk of infection, the presence of co-morbid conditions, and the lack of resources place individuals at increased physical and psychological risk of decreased health outcomes, which stresses an individual’s ability to meet the demand of work. Importantly, workers with comorbidities will face a difficult decision about re-entering the workforce. Although many may need to work to obtain health insurance, doing so may put them at increased risk of infection, especially given their comorbidities. Faced with this difficult choice, we cannot presume that workers will risk re-entering the workforce. Many may seek SSDI. But will they qualify? Can access Medicaid? This uncertainty and the lack of resources available to navigate the bureaucracy (for instance, some state governments are cutting funding for legal aid) are additional stressors with which these individuals must cope.

A group that will be significantly impacted that is not being talked about at all right now is high school students with disabilities who will be looking to transition from high school to work for the first time. It is likely that a large number of students with disabilities will not enter the labor market, placing them at increased risk for long-term unemployment and developing additional co-morbid physical and mental health conditions that will reduce future work capacity. Individuals aging out of foster care and those being released from prison will experience similar difficulties, placing them at risk for negative outcomes ranging from chronic unemployment, increased recidivism, and homelessness. Finally, adults who are participating in adult day services, that often include vocational services, will experience a cut in services placing them at increased risk for negative outcomes

Q: Workers on the H-2A guest worker program make up an estimated 10 percent of the U.S. agricultural workforce. But now the Trump administration is looking to cut their pay in the middle of a pandemic, ostensibly to help farmers. Your reaction? 

A: A further example of the current administration’s targeting of non-U.S. citizens combined with the devaluation of marginalized workers and the systemic problem of pay inequity. This is a good time for all of us to become reacquainted with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers movement in the late 1960s.   

Q: Black sanitation workers in Pittsburgh recently carried out a one-day strike to fight for protective clothing. How common is this?

A: I believe this is becoming more common as frontline workers are facing increased stress from the lack of access to necessary safety equipment. Workers at Amazon protested working conditions, and, after doing so, an individual who tried to organize workers was fired and publicly scapegoated by the company. Amazon is also being sued in New York because their warehouses are not following social distancing guidelines.  I have seen more ads for health care unions and their push to organize and demand a better work environment and increased safety on the job. Workers in Missouri filed an unsafe workplace complaint against Smithfield, and a judge ordered the company to comply with federal guidelines. In New York City, 10,000 correction officers have sued to remedy the lack of safety practices in jails and prisons that place both inmates and correctional officers at increased risk of COVID-19. In Richmond, Va., bus drivers called out of work to protest lack of hazard pay. Unions across the country are fighting for increased access to PPE and hazard pay. My guess is more will be coming as we become more aware of the issues and unsafe environments that many of these workers have had to endure since the start of the pandemic.

Despite actions by workers, industry is responding as well. There have been widespread attempts to discourage unions, and the president has issued an Executive Order declaring meat-packaging workers essential employees, essentially mandating them to work despite the poor work conditions. While many industries hold out their workers as “heroes on the front line,” they often implement policies that suppress wages, minimize workplace protections, and work to diminish bargaining power that could potentially lead to increased wages and protections on the job. Overall, the shortages of certain goods, such as meat, will lead to production-centric decisions, likely placing workers at increased risk. 

Q: Lower-income workers are still forced to go to their jobs, many via public transportation, where social distancing rules have not been followed. Is this emblematic of part of the problem for the marginalized worker?

A: Yes. This pandemic has actually lifted the veil on existing inequity in terms of pay, work conditions, and transportation. Issues in the workplace that negatively impact low-income workers are threefold. First, low-income workers typically are physically exposed to repetitive work, toxins, chemicals, and noise that cause harm. Second, low wages and the lack of benefits are financial factors that contribute to poor work environments and have been found to have a negative impact on health and well-being. Finally, an often-overlooked way the work can cause harm is psychosocially. Work that has high demands and low control, an imbalance between effort and reward, is socially isolated, and has real or perceived job insecurity negatively impact an individual’s health and well-being 

Q: Will these types of employees have the most difficult time when the economy does return?

A: Yes. The saying last hired, first fired, historically has applied during times of financial downturns, such as recessions. When the economy is strong, businesses must make more concessions to employees, and they are more accommodating to hiring and supporting marginalized individuals, including individuals with disabilities, criminal backgrounds, poor employment histories, and lower work skills.  When the labor market is tight, employers can afford to be more selective in who they hire and retain for positions. 

Q: What can be done, at a local, state or federal level, to protect these workers?
 
A: It would be my hope that as we deal with this as a country we continue to become aware of and increasingly uncomfortable with the fundamental inequity that exists in the work environment. In the short term, the government has implemented some good programs that are designed to target those workers most in need, such as increasing and extending unemployment benefits and the passage of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP). It would also be good to see the implementation of hazard pay for those workers deemed necessary.  

However, it is important to point out that this pandemic has highlighted the issues of workplace safety, low wages, and the overall social inequity created by unhealthy work environments.  I think the common response from most individuals and businesses will be a desire to return to the pre-pandemic normal. But that environment was not good for a majority of workers in the United States. I think now is an opportune time to think bigger, and think change. In the long-term, it would be good to see the implementation of hazard pay for those workers deemed necessary, expanded Medicaid eligibility, the introduction and expansion of paid sick leave, and increased wages. Addressing issue related to affordable housing, discrimination, and a fairer system for addressing workplace injuries would also help ameliorate some of the problems workers face. Finally, the role of unions may need to get explored. Unions have traditionally voiced workers’ concerns about healthcare, paid sick leave, increased wages, a grievance system, and workers compensation.  

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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Podcast: A Few Minutes With … David Strauser

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March 03, 2020 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Vince Lara, media relations specialist at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, speaks with David Strauser, professor of Kinesiology and Community Health at Illinois, about Dr. Strauser’s research on work personality and vocational behavior with a focus on people with chronic health conditions and disabilities.

Transcript

VINCE LARA: Hi, and welcome to another edition of A Few Minutes With, the podcast that showcases Illinois College of Applied Health Sciences. I’m Vince Lara, and today I’ll speak to Dr. David Strauser of our Kinesiology and Community Health Department about his research on work personality and vocational behavior with a focus on people with chronic health conditions and disability.

All right. Speaking with Dr. David Strauser. Dr. Strauser, I appreciate you taking the time to come on with our podcast. The first question I ask when I meet with faculty is I’m interested– I do my prep as any journalist would, and I try to find out– hmm, I wonder what led this person to our fine institution? Your background is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is where you got your degrees. So I wonder what led you to Illinois.

DAVID STRAUSER: That’s a good question. There’s probably a variety of things that led me to the University of Illinois. I came to the University of Illinois from the University of Memphis where I spent 10 years. And that was the first job that I got after completing my PhD at the University Wisconsin-Madison. Down there, I started a research center, had about 30 people working for me. We were doing a lot of work across the state of Tennessee in the southeast.

And then this opportunity came available at the University of Illinois. And I think for a combination of probably family reasons, being a native Midwesterner, and also an opportunity to be at a school like Illinois, it just seemed like a nice opportune time to make that switch from the University of Memphis to the University of Illinois. And a chance to be in a Big Ten school, at a big research school just seemed like a hard opportunity to turn down.

Also, I think Illinois is a little bit unusual compared to other programs in the Big Ten that have my area of study that it focused a little bit more on health and health behavior. And so that was something that maybe initially didn’t come into the mix but became a point of what I really appreciated over the course of my time here.

VINCE LARA: Are you from the Midwest originally?

DAVID STRAUSER: I’m from Madison, Wisconsin originally.

VINCE LARA: That makes sense. I know research is a big part of this job, obviously. But did you always want to teach? Was that something that was top of mind, or was it the research first for you?

DAVID STRAUSER:: That’s a really good question. And I would say it’s probably teaching first, research second. I started out as an undergraduate thinking that I would go on and do– as an athlete, I was going to go on and do coaching of some kind. So I think that was always kind of my focus as an undergraduate.

And I had some very influential faculty people who pulled me aside and said, hey, what about me be doing this? What about looking at this opportunity? And that started to peak my interest enough to go look into it a little bit deeper. After completing my undergraduate, I was out in the private sector for about a year or so and decided, you know, this is good, but really being affiliated with the university and pursuing that academic work would really be something that I’d want to do as a career.

With that then became the teaching, and then the research developed through my work as a doctoral student to really look at their research. But I was very much trained from faculty at UW Madison who trained me as a professor. So when we talk about a professor, in my opinion, it’s the research, teaching, and service together. It’s not just one aspect of it. So that relates to your first question about being in Illinois. I think Illinois gives me an opportunity to do all three of those core components of being a professor, and that’s teaching, research, and service.

VINCE LARA: Focusing on that research part, now, your research, to an extent, focuses on work, health, and well-being. And I’m wondering, commonly with researchers, there’s something that inspired them to look at that. And I was wondering if there’s anything that inspired you to look at those research lines.

DAVID STRAUSER:: Yeah, that’s an interesting story probably as a reflecting back on it. Again, as I was an athlete in college and struggled with injuries in college, it became losing the opportunity to compete in college because of injuries. I guess that was happening at the same time that I had some of these influential faculty in my year talking about, hey, what about pursuing rehabilitation psychology as a career? What about some of those things? So I guess serendipity of those things coming together.

That extended then to probably my first job, as I mentioned, before I went back to graduate school, and that was working with injured workers in Southern California. And through that and my own experience of injury and then working with industrial injured workers solidified my interest into working with people with disabilities as a whole and working with people who are having problems working– pursuing their careers because they have an injury or illness.

VINCE LARA: Yeah. You get some of your research was in marginalized workers. Could you talk a bit about that?

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty big term, marginalized workers, in that it’s a good word. It’s an encompassing word. I look at– especially right now, for probably about the last 15 years, I’ve really looked at young adults who are having a hard time entering the labor market for some reason related to a chronic health condition, whether that’s cancer– I do a large group of that. Could be some mental health issues, autism.

So they’ve been marginalized because they have a chronic health condition. We have a project right now where we’re looking at foster care youth, formerly incarcerated or justice involved youth. So you’re correct to save my work has always looked at people who’ve been marginalized from entry or participation in the labor market, usually because of some chronic health condition or combination thereof.

So my research has focused a lot on undergraduate– or I mean younger adults in terms of their entrance in the labor market. Probably an advocacy side of me has continued to deal with industrial injured workers– I’ll use that term– people who’ve been injured on the job and advocating for their overall well-being and helping them manage and deal with their loss. So that’s probably more of an outreach service component of it than it is a research part, where my research is primarily focusing on these young adults’ entrance into the labor market.

VINCE LARA: So what particularly do you deal with? Is it trying to overcome the stigma of what these workers have dealt with?

DAVID STRAUSER: Most people who have chronic health conditions are likely to experience difficulty in meeting the demands of working how it’s typically performed. So they’re having some issue with meeting the job requirements or figuring out how they identify with the labor market. They may– for example, somebody might have an interest in doing something as a career, but because they have a limitation or a functional impairment, can’t pursue that, so that causes a lot of stress. So I deal with that.

There also is just a lot of people right now and a lot that we more to learn about mental health that they’re having a lot of mental health issues that are impacting their ability to function on the job and meet the demands on the job. So they might get a job but they can’t keep a job. And so after a period of time, they start to develop that resume that looks very scattered, very thin in terms of duration on the job. And that becomes then stigmatizing and marginalized.

So stigma is an issue, obviously, that everybody deals with with chronic health conditions. That is something I deal with, but I’m more interested in how they fit to the environment, how do they see themselves fitting as a worker, and how did they develop their identity as a worker.

VINCE LARA: Has your research ever led to you being a consultant for either a company or perhaps an industry looking to help these marginalized workers get back in?

DAVID STRAUSER: I do a lot of work with a group called Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, where I work a lot with them to help young adult cancer survivors and businesses help understand issues related to cancer survivors, try to help that fit. So yes, I’ve worked with some non-profits and some NGOs to work with them to understand, develop plans, develop programs to help them address these issues.

VINCE LARA: You developed what’s called the Illinois Work and Well-being Model. I’m interested about that. Tell me a little bit what that is.

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah, the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model is kind of a byproduct of my 30 years of in this field of how I was thinking about career stuff and finally came together for me as a model, where in our field, in the health field, we use a lot of the International Classification of Functioning or the ICF. So I use components of the ICF and then Common Career Development domains and mesh those two together.

And the model really tries to explain about how people’s functioning and how their personal environmental factors impact how they function and how their functioning impacts the career domains of how people become aware of what they are in terms of what they want to do, their vocational identity, how they go about acquiring jobs, and how they go about maintaining jobs.

And so that model helps provide a framework for research, and it’s guided a lot of my research over my whole career. Probably the last four or five years it’s been formalized as a model that we’re using to guide our research, to help us identify factors and variables. But also, we’ve been using it quite a bit with practitioners to help them guide their services to identify where interventions might need to be placed, where are points of intervention.

So as an example, if we’re having a person, a young adult cancer survivor who has a brain tumor, they’re trying to figure out, where do I fit into the world of work? What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? We might want to look at their functioning. What are the residual factors of their brain tumor? How do they function in terms of physically, cognitively, emotionally? And how do they communicate? And look at that.

However, even though as we look at those factors or those components, we also understand that personal factors, psychological factors such as resilience, hope, self-efficacy, impact how they perceive their functioning. In addition, environmental factors– ethnicity, social class. I say ethnicity. Ethnicity is a personal factor, but their cultural background. Their social factors, their schooling, their family also impact how they perceive their functioning.

So we want to make sure that we’re looking at all those factors and then how do they relate over to the career domain and those three factors I talked about in terms of awareness. We call it awareness. Basically, vocational identity. Acquisition and maintenance.

VINCE LARA: You always have research going on, several projects in the pipeline. That’s one of the things you have to do.

DAVID STRAUSER: Right.

VINCE LARA: What are some of the ones that you have that you’re excited about, that can talk about, say?

DAVID STRAUSER: Yeah. We actually have a lot of good stuff going on right now, and I’m very excited about it. We’re at a good time. We’re having a lot of data and a lot of projects. So we are right now– a couple things. In terms of the cancer group, we have several data sets right now, one with Dana Farber, one with Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation, where we’re looking at these psychological career factors that impact employment and employment outcomes with a group of brain tumor survivors.

What’s really exciting about that, and this might– compared to people in other areas like epidemiology or even breast cancer, our data set combined right now is we have about 300 brain tumor survivors. That’s quite a good number for brain tumor survivors. So it’s a hard group to get. So we have some data there that we’re starting to analyze and look at working with these Dana Farber and Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation that look at what are these factors that impact employment outcomes.

And we’re very excited about that. We have several papers submitted right now. They’re under review. A couple of papers that have been accepted that are looking at using the Illinois Model, as we talked about, looking at how functioning and perception of functioning impacts the different domains of career. Highlight to that would be we’re starting to get good evidence to suggest that how people’s emotional function, the perceptions of their emotional functioning, really impact a lot of their identity development, contributes some to the acquisition phase.

Conversely, we know that people now who start to– how they perceive themselves physically really has a lot to do with how they perceive their ability to maintain a job. So what we can start to do there is start to parse out of, where people are in their career development, what our interventions need to target and what areas of functioning do we need to maybe support or address to maximize outcomes? So that’s very exciting with that.

Another population that we’re starting to look at or another group that we’re working with is, as I mentioned, a broader group of people with disabilities looking at developing some instruments related to the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model. We have a couple of instruments being developed right now to measure some of those constructs within the model, so we’re very excited about that. That’s not as maybe exciting, but for us, that’s a very practical piece.

Another area that we’re really starting to get into because we have seen it quite a bit with the young adults in foster care and the formerly incarcerated young adults is the issue of trauma and how trauma is impacting them, but how trauma is impacting their perceptions of their career development and their career development opportunities. And not surprisingly, we’re finding again there’s quite a bit of an impact there in terms of how much trauma, how they’re experiencing that trauma, how they feel about that trauma, how close to the surface, so to speak, that trauma is is going to be impacting a lot of how they see themselves as a worker, their identity, and their motivation to pursue those things.

VINCE LARA: My thanks to David Strauser. For more podcasts on Illinois’ College of Applied Health Sciences, search A Few Minutes With on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, and other places you get your podcasts fix. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

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