![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NEXOS_CAL_JUL_AGO-1.jpg)
International Congress of Psychology
Puerto Rico will participate in the International Congress of Psychology in Prague, organized by the International Union of Psychological Science. The Puerto Rico Association of Psychology will be present, and our members are part of the delegation, offering a keynote address on strategies to improve employee well-being and oral presentations on well-being, trauma, and care experiences.
The conference will be held from July 21 to 26, 2024. Access our participation schedule here: GN – Itinerario Conferencia Internacional Psicología 2024
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/PROSa-Mockup-1.png)
Health education project launches tool to strengthen parenting skills
The photo book showcases dynamics to help parents or caregivers connect with their teenage children.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Portada-Informe-Anual-2023.png)
Grupo Nexos: Annual Report 2023
The annual report for Grupo Nexos for the year 2023 is now available. The first annual report of Grupo Nexos is a milestone that marks our journey since our foundation in 2021. This report highlights our efforts and achievements from our inception until December 2023. You can access the report through the following link: Grupo Nexos: 2023 Annual Report
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/AdobeStock_125600720-scaled.jpeg)
Attention to child and youth care to eliminate poverty
In recent years, international initiatives have emerged to promote and improve individual, family, and community well-being. One of the initiatives led by the United Nations (UN) is the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 to combine systemic strategies between and within countries to eliminate poverty and social inequalities, protect natural resources, and achieve a sustainable world by 2030. SDGs comprise 17 goals with 169 interdependent indicators that seek to leave no one behind. This pact between countries constitutes a series of actions to achieve a desired transformation.
As part of the UN universal call, Puerto Rico has initiated different strategies to analyze what we have and lack in terms of policies and services to achieve the SDGs. The 2023 Puerto Rico Voluntary Local Report presented by the Puerto Rico Community Foundation encompasses one of these efforts. Some of the problems highlighted in the report and made visible in various studies are issues that affect human well-being, such as poverty, increased social inequalities, lack of access and availability to comprehensive health services, and the worsening of high-quality education both at the primary and higher levels, among others. All these issues are interrelated with the SDGs.
Specifically, we must emphasize the SDGs’ first goal: ending poverty. Puerto Rico lags, with 43% of the general population living below the poverty line, according to data from the Youth Development Institute (2023). It takes us even further away from meeting this objective, the fact that 55% of the child and youth population lives below the poverty line. Impoverishment has adverse implications for the positive development of the child and youth population and their families and affects human rights. Structural factors that perpetuate poverty (the following is not exhaustive) are related to poorer health outcomes, limited access to adequate housing, a non-nutritious diet, problems with academic achievement, and even barriers to obtaining paid work fair enough to achieve a sustainable livelihood for oneself and the family.
It is urgent to take action addressing the impoverishment factors that increase vulnerability among children, youth, and their families, which are generally women-led. Following the first SDG goal, it is urgent to implement policies and programs in Puerto Rico that support child and adolescent care, backing up mothers in the parenting process and their economic development. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), social responsibilities related to family care disproportionately affect women and, in turn, harm their participation in the labor market. Regarding this, the Study of the Needs of Working Women (2022) prepared by the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico reports that 47% of women need child care for their children, dependents, or family members, emphasizing that 63% require it for their school-age children and 37% for preschool-age children. These data confirm the need to understand and pay attention to the challenges women face to support the socio-economic development of families.
We are in a good moment to review and critically analyze the SDGs and explore how we can contribute from our place of action. Multi-level actions by the state, the nonprofit sector, and citizens are essential to achieving a country that guarantees social justice, equality, and peace. Let us remember that social transformations are also achieved from the bottom up.
Originally published by El Nuevo Día.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/AdobeStock_368013870-scaled.jpeg)
Child poverty: What is our aspiration?
For solutions to be effective, a multisectoral effort is required, one that operates at various levels and is sustained over time, states Marizaida Sánchez-Cesáreo.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AdobeStock_94084168-scaled.jpeg)
El Nuevo Día: Organizations receive a $6 million federal grant to address child poverty and health inequity.
The funds are intended to subsidize research aimed at promoting long-term changes in how minors from 0 to 21 years old, their parents, and caregivers receive services.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/JC102724-Edit-2-scaled.jpg)
Innovative research initiative receives $6M award to fight health disparities fueled by poverty in Puerto Rico
The initiative will employ a collective impact approach resulting from the collaboration of local organizations and national partners.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/BPH-3742-scaled.jpg)
Grupo Nexos inaugurates its new headquarters
Grupo Nexos celebrated the grand opening of its new headquarters in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on August 10, 2023, with the participation of a large group of collaborators and guests. The space now houses the organization’s administrative offices and shared workspaces.
Dr. Marizaida Sánchez Cesáreo, the Executive President of Grupo Nexos, marked the occasion as a significant milestone for the team, which has grown to include over a hundred individuals, encompassing employees, contractors, and collaborators. “Many years ago, upon returning to work in Puerto Rico, I drafted a proposal for what I envisioned as a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of communities through evidence-based practices. Grupo Nexos is the culmination of that vision.”
The offices are situated at Centro Altamira, 501 Perseo Street, Suite A, in San Juan.
Learn More
![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IMG_9352.jpeg)
El Nuevo Día: Study promotes the use of evidence-based practices among mental health professionals in Puerto Rico
Evidence-based practices are treatment or prevention methods proven successful in clinical or community studies. They optimize cost-effectiveness and the probability of success in mental health care. However, half of the professionals in this field in Puerto Rico need to learn how to implement them.
A new study by Natalia Giraldo Santiago, a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, assessed the needs and attitudes of mental health professionals in Puerto Rico towards the use of evidence-based practices. Her findings indicate that while most surveyed social workers, psychologists, and counselors supported their use, socio-economic and cultural factors could hinder their implementation.
Giraldo Santiago, trained as a social worker at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus, initiated the study in response to the country’s urgent mental health issues. In Puerto Rico, 19% of the population suffers from mental health problems, and 24% from substance use and abuse. Evidence-based practices serve “as a guide to help providers offer equal, high-quality care to all affected,” the researcher emphasized.
“If one recognizes ethical responsibility and competencies to demonstrate, then the use of evidence-based practices is very much in mind and comes out quite naturally,” expressed Patricia Landers Santiago, president of the Puerto Rico Psychology Association.
Giraldo Santiago’s study revealed that 75% of mental health professionals viewed evidence-based practices as appropriate for the Puerto Rican population. Yet, 51% were unsure how to access them, and 44% had not received training on their use in the past year.
The study also found that the Puerto Rican population surveyed was less favorable towards using evidence-based practices compared to US and international samples analyzed by other researchers.
So why aren’t these effective practices more widespread?
This partly relates to the Puerto Rico Mental Health Law (Law 408-2000) requirements. While the law encourages the use of effective and rigorous practices, it allows community-based organizations treating addictions to employ “historical, traditional, and ordinary” practices not necessarily scientifically verified.
Lili Sardiñas, a member of the Evidence-Based Working Group managed by Grupo Nexos, noted that shifting from traditional to evidence-based practices could be challenging. “There was considerable resistance to adopting evidence-based practices initially because people are used to doing things in their own way,” she said, “but this resistance is normal.”
Over time, Sardiñas observed an increase in the number of funders requiring these practices for project financing, leading to more professionals adopting them.
Nonetheless, even with the willingness to adopt these practices, “the lack of adequate compensation is a barrier,” Giraldo Santiago mentioned. “It’s challenging to shift towards these practices when more than 40% hold two, three, or four jobs. People lack the capacity to make this shift.”
Adopting an evidence-based practice demands significant time and effort. Professionals must sift through hundreds of options to find the best fit for a patient, study manuals, and take lessons on implementation. Often, adapting a study conducted on a US population for Puerto Ricans is necessary.
Grupo Nexos maintains the PBE Archive, compiling detailed descriptions of 562 evidence-based practices to ease professional access. This database includes manuals translated into Spanish.
“The adaptation of these practices for Puerto Rico is crucial,” she stressed. “Considerations must include language, religion, and all socio-economic factors.”
This adaptation is taking place within the field and across the country. “Psychology is now looking to Latin American and other international resources to develop a local psychology,” Landers Santiago added. “Psychology that is distinctly Puerto Rican for Puerto Ricans.”
Both interviewed experts and the majority of surveyed professionals view evidence-based practices as essential for Puerto Rican psychology.
Learn More![featured_image](https://www.nexospr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AdobeStock_392860457-scaled.jpeg)
Dialogue to create joint efforts against juvenile delinquency
The “Puerto Rico Minors Act” (Act 88-1986) was recently reformed. In this context, 18 government and nonprofit sector representatives started a conversation about the processes to address juvenile delinquency in Puerto Rico. It was the first of a series of meetings between the components of the social welfare system and the juvenile justice system to develop a joint work plan that offers responses to this situation. According to data presented at the meeting, of the profile of minors in the correction system, 53% suffer from some neurodevelopmental disorder, 42% have been victims of some type of abuse, and 44% have shown signs of emotional problems.
The group identified some challenges affecting the case management of youth interacting with the juvenile justice system. Among these are the absence of integrated data about the profile of minors, gaps in the availability of services, limitations in psychological services, and lack of continuity in services after leaving the juvenile institution. Also, areas of opportunity have been identified to begin work and provide more effective comprehensive services. For example, Puerto Rico has a legal framework that protects the rights of early childhood, and there are collaboration agreements in place between agencies to promote child and youth well-being. It has also been suggested that federal government funds are currently more available to support prevention and rehabilitation services. This is a starting point to explore ways to build on existing programs to expand prevention services.
There is a proposal to design a Pilot Functional Family Therapy program that provides services to young people at risk of coming into conflict with the law. This program could offer substance abuse counseling, conflict resolution, and anger management therapy. Likewise, the existing educational programs in youth institutions should be improved, and a continuous service plan should be developed to train young people to live independently.
Early intervention with minors in situations of abuse, with possible diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disorders or emotional problems, should be essential to prevent subsequent risk behavior that leads them to enter a juvenile institution. These efforts must be integrated with public policy and education, as well as prevention and socioeconomic development projects that seek to address the effects of inequality and lack of access to resources. Uniting our willpower, discussing ideas, and promoting diversity of voices are reasonable steps to direct a coherent, planned, and consistent project. Let us remember that the future is in the hands of our young people. These are lives that deserve a different opportunity.
Authored by: Katiana Pérez, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Drug-Free Alliance and member of the Puerto Rico Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Learn More