Santa Clara County Research Articles

When You Assume … the Reality of Implementing a Legally Mandated Substance Abuse Treatment Program

In 2000, the voters of California approved the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act (SACPA), mandating that substance-abusing offenders who met the eligibility criteria receive treatment and not jail time. In preparation for implementation, the Santa Clara County Department of Alcohol and Drug Services Research Institute worked to identify the number and type of clients who would be eligible to receive treatment. The purpose of this article is to analyze the differences between a profile of SACPA-eligible clients that was based on pre-SACPA implementation clients and assumptions that were made concerning eligibility for ttie program and the reality of post-SACPA implementation clients. This article examines causes and consequences of the discrepancies between policy and implementation in the area of substance abuse treatment.

Neighbourhood Composition and Residential Land Prices: Does Exclusion Raise or Lower Values?

Hedonic price models are used to explore the degree to which land-use and racial composition, used as outcome proxies for local zoning practices, influence residential land values in Santa Clara County, California. Fiscal pressures have prompted many California communities to zone on the basis of tax-yield potential, especially in fast-growing settings like Santa Clara County. Controlling for variables related to job accessibility as well as proximity to regional transport infrastructure, the analysis shows that indicators of land-use diversity and jobs-housing balance generally correlate with high residential land prices. While the fiscal instincts of Californian municipalities is to shun housing in favour of commercial development and thus to create imbalanced land development patterns, this research suggests these fiscal advantages are partly offset by lower land values and thus lower property tax intake. Racial diversity, on the other hand, lowered residential property values, even when controlling for neighbourhood factors like average household income. This finding suggests that, to the degree that local zoning responds to land-market forces, exclusion in residential settings is more a product of racial than land-use composition. As long as land markets attach either values or disbenefits to land-use mix and racial diversity, market-sensitive zoning policies that reinforce these outcomes will be likely to prevail, particularly in buoyant real-estate markets like Santa Clara County.

The Effects of Participation in a Cultural Awareness Program on Jail Inmates

Cultural awareness/diversity training has been main-streamed into the educational curriculum and corporate training seminars. This paper is a description of a cultural awareness/diversity program administered as part of a post-release program in Santa Clara County (California). Participants were given pre- and post-program participation questionnaires designed to measure English proficiency, their awareness and pride in their own cultural traditions, cultural perceptions, and tolerance towards other cultural traditions. Participation in the program did not have statistically significant effects on cultural pride and tolerance of other cultures. The effects of the program on cultural perceptions were significant, but the direction of changes was the opposite of the authors' expectations. That is, participants exhibited heightened awareness of inter-racial/ethnic differences. Implications were discussed.

Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time (review)

Reviewed by: Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time Richard Menke (bio) Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time, edited by Christine L. Krueger; pp. xx + 195. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002, $44.95, $19.95 paper. All calendar-obsessed Victorianists must have suffered a trauma in the first years of our new millennium: suddenly, more than a century separated us from the period we studied. Responding to this transition, the essays in Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time explore and reaffirm the afterlives of Victorian culture within our own, with varied but sometimes provocative results. The subjects and approaches of the pieces here are at least [End Page 328] as diverse as in most edited collections; the book uses five section headings in an attempt to organize eleven articles. Yet all of the essays here are clearly written and refreshingly modest in length—although it's probably not realistic to hope, as Christine L. Krueger does in her introduction, that the book will reach many undergraduates or much of a "wider audience" beyond "Victorianists and Victorianists in training" (xiii). Since the articles tackle such different topics, it seems appropriate to discuss the most intriguing among them in terms of the general ways in which they stage the encounter between Victorian culture and our own. One of the most popular approaches to the conjunction between the Victorian and the contemporary is simply to interpret particular present-day cultural developments and norms from a Victorianist's point of view. Miriam Bailin's witty "The New Victorians" reads neo-Victorian interior decoration through both the cultural fantasies it encodes and the real Victorian décor it displaces—for instance, stuffed or skinned domestic pets as objets d'art. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman analyzes recent dramatic representations of the story of John Ruskin and Effie Gray, concluding that—as compelling as they may be on stage—these adaptations ultimately affirm their audience's complacent sense of remoteness from a caricatured Victorianism. And Ellen Bayuk Rosenman offers a splendid two-for- one, an argument about the representation of fine objects in both Victorian novels and their recent adaptations on film and television. Her "More Stories about Clothing and Furniture: Realism and Bad Commodities" begins by skillfully scrutinizing Victorian novelists' careful disengagement from vulgar detail even as they delineate the object-world in which they set their fictions. This paradigm then helps Rosenman explore the different relationship of our sumptuous historical costume dramas (many adapted from Victorian fiction) to the world of commodities they lovingly present for viewerly delectation. Some of the most ambitious contributions to the volume offer critical reflections on the stories we tell about history, time, or identity. Simon Joyce's astute "The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror" examines the late Victorians' (and early Edwardians') treatments of contemporary history as the pattern for a future anti-Victorianism as well as for the twentieth century's rhetoric of rupture and return to Victorian values. In a somewhat related vein, Ronald R. Thomas reads the story of the much-ridiculed Millennium Dome as a postmodern echo of Victorian efforts to exhibit and reorganize time and space via the Great Exhibition and the establishment of an international prime meridian centered on Greenwich's Royal Observatory. Other essays analyze the emergence of particular Victorian identities in the service of contemporary cultural critique. In "Wilde Americana," Jesse Matz rereads gay history through Oscar Wilde's trip to America at the dawn of corporate identity and modern marketing. Matz's audacious alignment of Wilde's prototypical gay identity in the years after his 1882 visit and the consolidation of corporate personhood (in the 1882 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision) struck me as exciting but a little sketchy; more convincing are his analyses of Wilde's lessons in self-promotion and his critique of present-day alliances between corporate marketing and sexual identity. Krueger's own essay examines the place of storytelling in Victorian legal reform around the new figure of the juvenile delinquent. Her account helps explain the prominent reformer Mary Carpenter's acceptance of sensational jailhouse "memoirs" that turned out to be manifest fictions—and provides a caution to present-day...

BOOK REVIEW: edited by Christine L. Krueger.FUNCTIONS OF VICTORIAN CULTURE AT THE PRESENT TIME. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002.

Reviewed by: Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time Richard Menke (bio) Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time, edited by Christine L. Krueger; pp. xx + 195. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002, $44.95, $19.95 paper. All calendar-obsessed Victorianists must have suffered a trauma in the first years of our new millennium: suddenly, more than a century separated us from the period we studied. Responding to this transition, the essays in Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time explore and reaffirm the afterlives of Victorian culture within our own, with varied but sometimes provocative results. The subjects and approaches of the pieces here are at least [End Page 328] as diverse as in most edited collections; the book uses five section headings in an attempt to organize eleven articles. Yet all of the essays here are clearly written and refreshingly modest in length—although it's probably not realistic to hope, as Christine L. Krueger does in her introduction, that the book will reach many undergraduates or much of a "wider audience" beyond "Victorianists and Victorianists in training" (xiii). Since the articles tackle such different topics, it seems appropriate to discuss the most intriguing among them in terms of the general ways in which they stage the encounter between Victorian culture and our own. One of the most popular approaches to the conjunction between the Victorian and the contemporary is simply to interpret particular present-day cultural developments and norms from a Victorianist's point of view. Miriam Bailin's witty "The New Victorians" reads neo-Victorian interior decoration through both the cultural fantasies it encodes and the real Victorian décor it displaces—for instance, stuffed or skinned domestic pets as objets d'art. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman analyzes recent dramatic representations of the story of John Ruskin and Effie Gray, concluding that—as compelling as they may be on stage—these adaptations ultimately affirm their audience's complacent sense of remoteness from a caricatured Victorianism. And Ellen Bayuk Rosenman offers a splendid two-for- one, an argument about the representation of fine objects in both Victorian novels and their recent adaptations on film and television. Her "More Stories about Clothing and Furniture: Realism and Bad Commodities" begins by skillfully scrutinizing Victorian novelists' careful disengagement from vulgar detail even as they delineate the object-world in which they set their fictions. This paradigm then helps Rosenman explore the different relationship of our sumptuous historical costume dramas (many adapted from Victorian fiction) to the world of commodities they lovingly present for viewerly delectation. Some of the most ambitious contributions to the volume offer critical reflections on the stories we tell about history, time, or identity. Simon Joyce's astute "The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror" examines the late Victorians' (and early Edwardians') treatments of contemporary history as the pattern for a future anti-Victorianism as well as for the twentieth century's rhetoric of rupture and return to Victorian values. In a somewhat related vein, Ronald R. Thomas reads the story of the much-ridiculed Millennium Dome as a postmodern echo of Victorian efforts to exhibit and reorganize time and space via the Great Exhibition and the establishment of an international prime meridian centered on Greenwich's Royal Observatory. Other essays analyze the emergence of particular Victorian identities in the service of contemporary cultural critique. In "Wilde Americana," Jesse Matz rereads gay history through Oscar Wilde's trip to America at the dawn of corporate identity and modern marketing. Matz's audacious alignment of Wilde's prototypical gay identity in the years after his 1882 visit and the consolidation of corporate personhood (in the 1882 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision) struck me as exciting but a little sketchy; more convincing are his analyses of Wilde's lessons in self-promotion and his critique of present-day alliances between corporate marketing and sexual identity. Krueger's own essay examines the place of storytelling in Victorian legal reform around the new figure of the juvenile delinquent. Her account helps explain the prominent reformer Mary Carpenter's acceptance of sensational jailhouse "memoirs" that turned out to be manifest fictions—and provides a caution to present-day...

Late-Breaking Clinical Trial Abstracts

Late-Breaking Clinical Trial Abstracts

A new polydesmid milliped genus and two new species from Oregon and Washington, U. S. A., with a review of Bidentogon Buckett and Gardner, 1968, and a summary of the family in Western North America (Polydesmida: Polydesmidae)

In North America west of the Continental Divide, the milliped family Polydesmidae consists of six genera and 15 species, and occupies eight disjunct areas. Retrorsia, n. gen., is proposed for two new “micro-polydesmid” species (R. leonardi, the type species, and R. benedictae) in western Oregon and Washington, primarily in the lower Columbia River Valley. It is most closely related to Utadesmus Chamberlin and Hoffman, 1950, in Utah and New Mexico, and is characterized primarily by a retrorse gonopodal tibiotarsus that curves dorsad and counters the ventral curvature of the telopodal stem. New records are presented for the coastal species of Bidentogon Buckett and Gardner, 1968, occurring from Mendocino to Santa Cruz counties, California, and encompassing the area around San Francisco Bay. The oldest available name for this species is californicus (Chamberlin, 1918), whose type locality is Stanford, Santa Clara County. This name has been misapplied to the species occurring in Sacramento County, herein named B. expansus, n. sp., and B. helferorum Buckett and Gardner, 1968, is placed in synonymy under B. californicus.

The Serpent in the Garden of Eden

Northern California is often described as Eden: an area of great natural beauty with ancient forests and a breathtaking coast. And this setting is complemented by man-made accomplishments including one of America's great cities, San Francisco, and a high-tech "fantasy zone" known the world over as Silicon Valley (even those of us who live in the area are tempted on occasion by such appealing imagery). But Eden has its own dark underside examined admirably well by Stephen Pitti in this cogent and well-researched work. This is a book about race relations in the Santa Clara County, especially following the avatars of the Mexican and Mexican-American community. The Devil in Silicon Valley thus introduces a viewpoint that is often left out in our current understanding of this area. The book starts out with the simple observation that California's residents of Mexican origins (as well as other racialized minorities) have laid claims to the Santa Clara Valley for generations. It goes on to argue that these past struggles and changing race-relations in many ways have conditioned present-day social interactions, racial thought, and ultimately have shaped in important ways the history and character of this region of California. The Devil in the book's title—that unwelcome fixture of Eden—refers precisely to the enduring understanding of racial difference that for more than two centuries has brought about patterns of conquest and violence, accommodation and resistance.

Combating Elder Financial Abuse–A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to a Growing Problem

SUMMARY While the number of violent crimes in the United States is decreasing, financial crimes against the elderly are increasing due to the aging of the overall population and greater concentration of wealth among older people. The United States, along with the rest of the world, is experiencing dramatic growth of its senior populace; and financial abuse of the elderly is also dramatically rising. Santa Clara County, California's response to this problem via their model program emphasizing a multi-disciplinary approach to combating financial abuse will be discussed.

Promotora Telemedicine Project

The Promotora Telemedicine Project utilizes a telemedicine network to link diabetic patients in underserved areas with teams of physicians and Certified Diabetes Educators who deliver state-of-the-art health care services. Care is assisted by a support network of Spanish-speaking facilitators who serve as a cultural interface between Latino patients and diabetes care providers. This project is designed to test the hypothesis that new technology can be combined with culturally sensitive programs to improve access to high-quality care and to reduce the cost of diabetes care in Santa Clara County, California.

Promotora Telemedicine Project

The Promotora Telemedicine Project utilizes a telemedicine network to link diabetic patients in underserved areas with teams of physicians and Certified Diabetes Educators who deliver state-of-the-art health care services. Care is assisted by a support network of Spanish-speaking facilitators who serve as a cultural interface between Latino patients and diabetes care providers. This project is designed to test the hypothesis that new technology can be combined with culturally sensitive programs to improve access to high-quality care and to reduce the cost of diabetes care in Santa Clara County, California.

Elder Abuse Prevention

Increasing caseloads in die area of financial abuse prompted Santa Clara County Department of Aging and Adult Services (DAAS) to develop a Financial Abuse Specialist Team (FAST) in May 1999 to provide an efficient system for investigating and acting on reports of financial abuse in Santa Clara County. The primary members of the team include staff from Adult Protective Services, the Public Administrator/Guardian's Office, the offices of the County Counsel, the officeof the District Attorney as well as other staff from within the Department of Adult and Aging Services. This is a case study of FAST as a rapid-response system providing immediate intervention in cases of financial abuse against elders, and provides the community with both a deterrent to prevent future incidence offinancial abuse and the ability to move quickly to prevent losses by creating a seamless system of collaboration. It concludes with a discussion of lessons learned.

Universal Health Care for Children: Two Local Initiatives

Over the past decade, expansions under Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) have brought a significant infusion of federal dollars into state and county health systems and have produced a variety of state-level programs. Yet, the expansion of public health insurance programs at the state level has had mixed success in providing coverage and improving access to care for children. (1) In some cases, states have fallen short of their enrollment projections because of barriers such as some children remaining ineligible for coverage (2) or families finding programs difficult to access. In response to these barriers, counties and local communities have increasingly emerged as hubs of innovation by using creative strategies to make insurance coverage and access to care available to children who do not meet the state eligibility criteria. This article describes the programs of two counties that have attempted to expand access to care for children: the Children's Health Initiative in Santa Clara County, California; and the Kids Get Care program in King County, Washington. The Santa Clara County Children's Health Initiative (CHI) adopted an insurance expansion model through its local initiative health plan, while the King County Kids Get Care (KGC) program is a service coordination model that directly links families to community-based medical homes. (3) The article begins by describing these two county-level programs and comparing the approach each has taken, then draws on these experiences to outline important elements for counties that want to create universal health care for children and families: committed leadership, health systems infrastructure, multiple financing sources, and community support. Two Models for Improving Children's Health Care Access in a Patchwork System The Santa Clara County and King County initiatives were selected for study in this article for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, they took differing approaches to improving children's access to care, and the programs are at least 12 months into their implementation. In addition, both counties are home to highly diverse populations and have publicly financed delivery systems with the capacity to support activities proposed under each initiative. Finally, each county also has a major city with a moderate to high concentration of uninsured children--the city of San Jose in Santa Clara County and the city of Seattle in King County. The counties are using two different approaches to move toward universal health care for children in otherwise patchwork health systems. The Santa Clara County CHI is a health insurance expansion with a focus on integrating funding and service delivery, while the King County KGC program is a services-based initiative that directly finks the child to a community-based, integrated continuum of care. This section provides a more detailed description of the two counties and their children's health initiatives. The Santa Clara County Children's Health Initiative Located at the southern end of the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Clara County is home to 1,736,722 residents; about 462,000 of them are under age 18. (4) Approximately 925,000 of the county's residents live in San Jose, the biggest and most populous city in the county. (5) The county has also witnessed tremendous growth in its racial and ethnic populations. Latinos currently comprise about 25% of the county's population, Asians and Pacific Islanders 20%, and African Americans about 4%. Santa Clara County, home to the original Silicon Valley and the high-tech industry, has been described as having an hourglass-shaped economy. While Santa Clara is a relatively affluent county with a large number of families earning above the national median household income, (6) many low- and moderate-income families struggle with escalating housing costs and the basic costs of living, including the cost of health insurance. …

Cultures@Silicon Valley

After Santa Clara county in California was labeled in the 1970s, it attained a mythical quality in the public imagination. Although much of the myth is surely hyperbole, the region has experienced and continues to experience forces that will shape the future elsewhere in the United States and around the world. The paramount producer of the information revolution, Silicon Valley has become the icon for a lifestyle saturated with digital devices. Whereas most books on the region focus on its entrepreneurial reputation, this book is an anthropological expedition into the everyday lives of people living in and connected to Silicon Valley-software engineers around the water cooler, a mothers' group at lunch, nannies in the park, rush-hour commuters-to get at the emerging texture of life. A specialized high-tech economy has drawn people from many countries, and the things that make Silicon Valley culture distinctive-technological saturation and cultural complexity-also define an emerging global culture, and in that context it operates as a natural experimental laboratory. Based on ten years of anthropological research, the book is an ethnographic exploration of the impact of these momentous changes on a single region. Within schools, workplaces, and homes identities emerge, erode, transform, and are recreated to coalesce into a larger community of communities, producing many different choices for its inhabitants. These choices determine how technology is used, work is done, and families are made. People juggle these choices, often informed by the same pragmatic, instrumental reasoning that characterizes high-tech workplaces. Saturated by information technology and struggling to manifest civic life from deeply diverse identity communities, the inhabitants of Silicon Valley illustrate in microcosm the social and cultural identities of the future.

Transit Use and Proximity to Rail: Results from Large Employment Sites in the San Francisco, California, Bay Area

Survey data from more than 1,000 large employment sites in the San Francisco Bay Area are used to examine the link between transit use and proximity to rail stations. The data were collected as part of an employer trip-reduction rule. Findings show that sites within one-quarter mile of a rail station have significantly higher rates of transit use than sites between one-quarter and one-half mile from stations. Transit use drops even further one-half mile from stations. That relationship holds true for all three rail systems in the Bay area. A closer look at 20 work sites near two light rail stations in Santa Clara County reveals that actual walking distance is also an important factor related to transit use. However, site design often lengthens walking distance unnecessarily. In addition, certain types of employers have higher rates of transit use than others.

Predictors of cervical Pap smear screening awareness, intention, and receipt among Vietnamese-American women

Background: Compared with white women, Vietnamese women in the United States have a higher rate of cervical cancer and lower Papanicolau (Pap) test utilization. We evaluated factors associated with awareness of the Pap test, intention to obtain it, and its receipt in Vietnamese-American women. Methods: In 2000, we conducted a telephone survey of Vietnamese-American women aged ≥18 years living in Santa Clara County, California, and Harris County, Texas. We collected data on sociodemographics, healthcare system access and attitudes, as well as Pap test awareness, attitudes, intentions, and practices. Results: Of 1566 subjects, 74% had heard of the Pap test, and 76% had had at least one. Only 42% of those who never had a Pap test had considered obtaining one. There were no significant differences between the two sites. Women aged ≥65 had the lowest rates for all three outcomes. For all women, younger age, being married, having requested a Pap test, physician recommendation, and preferring a female standby if the doctor was male were associated with Pap test intention. Being married, higher level of education, having a female doctor, having a respectful doctor, having requested the test, and physician recommendation were associated with Pap test receipt. Conclusion: Vietnamese-American women have low rates of Pap test awareness, intention, and receipt. The patient-doctor interaction is an important determinant. Efforts to increase Pap test utilization in this population need to be directed at encouraging physicians to offer the Pap test and empowering women to ask for the test.

Mediation in Juvenile Dependency Court: Multiple Perspectives

ABSTRACTFor approximately 10 years, the Santa Clara County (Calif.),1 Juvenile Dependency Court has utilized confidential mediation as an integral part of the court process. After hundreds of mediation sessions, we believe it is time for the various participants in the dependency system to reflect on their perspectives on mediation, its strengths and weaknesses, and its future in our court system. Each author, representing a different party or interest in the child welfare system, has a unique perspective on the process. We hope this information will be useful for other jurisdictions utilizing or considering implementing mediation.Beginning with a description of dependency mediation and the mediation process utilized in Santa Clara County, representatives from each participant in the juvenile dependency process–including the mediators, the social worker, the attorney for the family and children's services agency, the child's attorney, the parents, the parents' attorney, a domestic violence advocate, the child advocate (CASA), and the juvenile court judicial officer–follow with their perspectives on mediation. The article concludes with some general thoughts about mediation, its value, its problems, and its future in Santa Clara County.

Religious Attitudes and Beliefs Among Japanese Americans: King County, Washington and Santa Clara County, California

The beliefs and attitudes on religion and religiosity within the Japanese American population in the continental United States is a relatively unexplored topic, A 1998–2000 study of randomly sampled, face-to-face interviews with 344 Japanese Americans was conducted in King County, Washington, and Santa Clara, California. The study included six questions relevant to religious attitudes and beliefs with analysis offered concerning the differences and similarities with data obtained from fifty-years of study in Japan and Japanese American religiosity. Such differences included having a personal faith and the degree to which Christianity is a notable part of Japanese American life. Conversely, the persistence of Buddhism among Japanese Americans was another striking finding. Japanese Americans exhibit today, across the age ranges, through the generations and between genders, a high rate of personal religious belief, attendance at Christian and Buddhist churches and temples and a high level of agreement concerning the importance of religious attitudes.

Focus groups show need for diabetes awareness education among African Americans

The UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Health Promotion Workgroup assessed diabetes awareness among African Americans at risk for the disease. Workgroup members conducted focus group discussions with the target population in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties. Although obesity is considered a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, most participants cited poor dietary patterns, rather than body weight, as the most important factor in the high rate of diabetes among African Americans. Food preferences, family pressure and lack of social support were most often mentioned as obstacles to healthful dietary changes. Many felt that not enough information about diabetes was reaching the black community and voiced the need for culturally sensitive education, delivered through community-based channels.

A New Species of <I>Eutarsopolipus</I> (Acari: Podapolipidae) from <I>Platynus brunneomarginatus</I> Mannerheim (Coleoptera: Carabidae) from Western North America, Including a Taxonomic Key to Species of <I>Eutarsopolipus</I> in the <I>biunguis</I> Group

A new species of podapolipid mite, Eutarsopolipus platyni, is described, illustrated, and compared with related species of Eutarsopolipus in the biunguis group. The species is an ectoparasite of Platynus brunneomarginatus Mannerheim collected from Alameda, Marin, and Santa Clara Counties in California, U.S.A., and Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. This is the first record of the biunguis group of Eutarsopolipus in western North America. A key to the seven species of the biunguis group of Eutarsopolipus is provided.