See all articles from this issue 

Make sure to register soon to get the early-bird rate for the 2019 NCFR Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. There will be great posters, papers, presentations, workshops, and symposia related to families and health issues. Thank you to all the reviewers who scored the 170 individual proposals—a new record! We will be presenting paper and poster awards at the Families and Health (FH) Section meeting at the 2019 conference. Paper award winners will receive $200 and a plaque, and poster award winners will receive $100. Submissions are due June 1, 2019. For more information, go to https://www.ncfr.org/awards/section-awards.

We would like to recognize the winners of the Families and Health (FH) Section 2018 paper and poster awards. We were impressed by the quality and scope of scholarship they produced.

2018 Outstanding Professional Paper/Publications Award

Rochelle L. Dalla, Ph.D., CFLE

“Children of Mumbai’s Brothels: Investigating Developmental Prospects, Primary Relationships, and Service Provision”

For the professional paper/publication award, we were pleased to recognize the international work of Dr. Dalla, a professor of child, youth, and family studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She and her co-investigators formed partnerships with multiple Indian-based nongovernmental organizations and conducted in-depth interviews with women living in Mumbai’s red-light districts as well as service providers. Their analyses focused on providing demographic information on brothel-based children (BBC), examining the mother–child relationship, and identifying formal services available to BBC. They also explored the connections between mothers and service providers and among the service providers themselves. The paper was recently published in the February 2019 issue of Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Science.

2018 Outstanding Student and New Professional Paper Award

J. Kale Monk, Ph.D., CFLE

“Relational Turbulence and Psychological Distress in Romantic Relationships in the Military”

The winner of our Outstanding Student and New Professional paper award, Dr. Monk, is an assistant professor and extension specialist at the University of Missouri. He and his coauthor utilized a grounded theory approach to analyze romantic relationship experiences in a military context, as described by posters to online forums. From their findings, they generated a model that highlights the relational turbulence and psychological distress that results from perceived partner changes and transgressions. These processes created a cycle that involved fighting between partners, feeling conflicted, and experiences of turmoil. Their findings offer important implications for expanding relational turbulence theory as well as intervention.

2018 Outstanding Student and New Professional Poster Award

Deirdre Quinn, Ph.D.

“Factors Associated with Emerging Adults’ Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccine Behaviors”

The Students and New Professionals poster award was presented to Dr. Quinn for her research on group differences in emerging adults’ awareness of the HPV vaccine, current vaccine receipt status, and future vaccine intentions. Her findings highlight the need for targeted education efforts to improve vaccination rates among young adult males, as well as HPV vaccine awareness campaigns that directly engage with minority racial, ethnic, and religious communities to reduce disparities in vaccine uptake and disease burden. Dr. Quinn completed a Ph.D. in Family Science at the University of Maryland in 2017 and is an advanced research fellow in women’s health at the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion of the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. Her current research centers on associations between chronic disease and pre-pregnancy health and wellness among women veterans.