School Programs and Characteristics and Their Influence on Student BMI: Findings from Healthy Passages

Background: Little is known about the contribution of school contextual factors to individual student body mass index (BMI). We set out to determine if school characteristics/resources: (1) are associated with student BMI; (2) explain racial/ethnic disparities in student BMI; and (3) explain school-level differences in student BMI. Methods: Using gender-stratified multi-level modeling strategies we examined the association of school characteristics/resources and individual BMI in 4,387 5th graders in the Healthy Passages Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Additionally, we examined the association of race/ethnicity and individual BMI as well as the between-school variance in BMI before and after adding individual and school characteristics to test for attenuation. Results: The school-level median household income, but not physical activity or nutrition resources, was inversely associated with female BMI (β = −0.12, CI: −0.21,−0.02). Neither school demographics nor physical activity/nutrition resources were predictive of individual BMI in males. In Black females, school characteristics attenuated the association of race/ethnicity and BMI. Individual student characteristics—not school characteristics/resources-reduced the between-school variation in BMI in males by nearly one-third and eliminated it in females. Conclusions: In this cohort of 5th graders, school SES was inversely associated with female BMI while school characteristics and resources largely explained Black/White disparities in female weight status. Between-school differences in average student weight status were largely explained by the composition of the student body not by school characteristics or programming

Social representations and the politics of participation

Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representations are systems of common-sense knowledge and social practice; they provide the lens through which to view and create social and political realities, mediate people's relations with these sociopolitical worlds and defend cultural and political identities. Social representations are therefore key for conceptualising participation as the activity that locates individuals and social groups in their sociopolitical world. Political participation is generally seen as conditional to membership of sociopolitical groups and therefore is often linked to citizenship. To be a citizen of a society or a member of any social group one has to participate as such. Often political participation is defined as the ability to communicate one's views to the political elite or to the political establishment (Uhlaner, 2001), or simply explicit involvement in politics and electoral processes (Milbrath, 1965). However, following scholars on ideology (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990) and social knowledge (Jovchelovitch, 2007), we extend our understanding of political participation to all social relations and also develop a more agentic model where individuals and groups construct, develop and resist their own views, ideas and beliefs. We thus adopt a broader approach to participation in comparison to other political-psychological approaches, such as personality approaches (e.g. Mondak and Halperin, 2008) and cognitive approaches or, more recently, neuropsychological approaches (Hatemi and McDermott, 2012). We move away from a focus on the individual's political behaviour and its antecedents and outline an approach that focuses on the interaction between psychological and political phenomena (Deutsch and Kinnvall, 2002) through examining the politics of social knowledge

Watch me, watch you: ritual participation increases in-group displays and out-group monitoring in children

© 2021 The Author(s). Collective rituals serve social functions for the groups that perform them, including identifying group members and signaling group commitment. A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool program (N = 60 4-11-year-olds) to test the influence of participating in a ritual task on in-group displays and out-group monitoring over repeated exposures to the group. The results demonstrate that ritual participation increases in-group displays (i.e., time spent displaying materials to in-group members) and out-group monitoring (i.e., time spent looking at out-group members) compared to a control task across three time points. This study provides evidence for the processes by which rituals may influence children’s behaviors toward in- and outgroup members and discusses implications for understanding the development of ritual cognition and behavior.American Psychological Foundation Elizabeth M. Koppitz Graduate Student Fellowship and the University of Texas at Austin Continuing Graduate Fellowship to N.J.W.; Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant ‘Ritual, Community, and Conflict’ (REF RES-060-25-0085) to C.H.L

Maternal experiences of ethnic discrimination and subsequent birth outcomes in Aotearoa New Zealand

Background Interpersonal discrimination experience has been associated with adverse birth outcomes. Limited research has evaluated this relationship within multicultural contexts outside the United States where the nature and salience of discrimination experiences may differ. Such research is important in order to help identify protective and risk factors that may mediate the relationship between discrimination experience and adverse birth outcomes. Methods Evaluated the relationship between perceived discrimination, as measured in pregnancy, with birth weight and gestation length among Māori, Pacific, and Asian women from Aotearoa New Zealand (N = 1653). Results Thirty percent of the sample reported some type of unfair treatment that they attributed to their ethnicity. For Māori women specifically, unfair treatment at work (β = − 243 g) and in acquiring housing (β = − 146 g) were associated with lower birth weight when compared to Māori women not experiencing these types of discrimination, while an ethnically motivated physical attack (β = − 1.06 week), and unfair treatment in the workplace (β = − 0.95 week), in the criminal justice system (β = − 0.55 week), or in banking (β = − 0.73 week) were associated with significantly shorter gestation. Conclusions Despite a high prevalence of discrimination experience among women from all ethnic groups, discrimination experience was a strong predictor of lower birth weight and shorter gestation length among indigenous Māori women only. Additional research is needed to better understand the risk and protective factors that may moderate the relationship between discrimination experience and adverse birth outcomes among women from different ethnic groups

The association between maternal and partner experienced racial discrimination and prenatal perceived stress, prenatal and postnatal depression: findings from the growing up in New Zealand cohort study

Background A growing number of studies document the association between maternal experiences of racial discrimination and adverse children’s outcomes, but our understanding of how experiences of racial discrimination are associated with pre- and post-natal maternal mental health, is limited. In addition, existent literature rarely takes into consideration racial discrimination experienced by the partner. Methods We analysed data from the Growing Up in New Zealand study to examine the burden of lifetime and past year experiences of racial discrimination on prenatal and postnatal mental health among Māori, Pacific, and Asian women in New Zealand (NZ), and to study the individual and joint contribution of mother’s and partner’s experiences of lifetime and past year racial discrimination to women’s prenatal and postnatal mental health. Results Our findings show strong associations between lifetime and past year experiences of ethnically-motivated interpersonal attacks and unfair treatment on mother’s mental health. Māori, Pacific, and Asian women who had experienced unfair treatment by a health professional in their lifetime were 66 % more likely to suffer from postnatal depression, compared to women who did not report these experiences. We found a cumulative effect of lifetime experiences of ethnically-motivated personal attacks on poor maternal mental health if both the mother and the partner had experienced a racist attack. Conclusions Experiences of racial discrimination have severe direct consequences for the mother’s mental health. Given the importance of mother’s mental health for the basic human needs of a healthy child, racism and racial discrimination should be addressed

Defining neighborhood boundaries in studies of spatial dependence in child behavior problems

This article extends an analysis of neighborhood effects on child behavioral outcomes

Direct observation of neighborhood attributes in an urban area of the US south: characterizing the social context of pregnancy

BACKGROUND: Neighborhood characteristics have been associated with poor maternal and child health outcomes, yet conceptualization of potential mechanisms is still needed. Census data have long served as proxies for area level socioeconomic influences. Unique information captured by neighborhood inventories, mostly conducted in northern US and Canadian urban areas, has shown important aspects of the community environment that are not captured by the socioeconomic and demographic aggregated individual statistics of census data. In this paper, we describe a neighborhood data collection effort tailored to a southern urban area. METHODS: This study used data from the Pregnancy, Nutrition and Infection (PIN) prospective cohort study to describe neighborhoods where low- and moderate-income pregnant women reside. Women who participated in the PIN study and who resided in Raleigh, NC and its surrounding suburbs were included (n = 703). Neighborhood attributes captured by the inventory included litter, housing condition, road condition, and social interactions that informed theoretical constructs of physical incivility, territoriality and social spaces. US Housing and Population Census 2000 data at the block group level were also assessed to identify the unique contribution of directly observed data. We hypothesize that neighborhood environments can influence health through psychosocial mediated pathways that lead to increased stress, or through disadvantage leading to poor neighborhood resources, or by protective attributes through increased social control. RESULTS: Findings suggest that directly observed neighborhood attributes distinguished between different types of areas in which low-income pregnant non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black women lived. Theoretically informed scales of physical incivilities, territoriality and social spaces were constructed and found to be internally consistent. Scales were weakly associated indicating that these constructs capture distinct information about these neighborhoods. Physical incivilities, territoriality and social spaces scales were poorly explained by traditional census variables used to proxy neighborhood environment. CONCLUSION: If neighborhoods influence health through psychosocial mediated pathways then careful detailing of neighborhood attributes that contribute to stress or deterioration, beyond traditional socioeconomic status, are needed. We believe that measuring physical incivility, territoriality and social spaces as expressions of underlying issues of maintenance and social communication make important contributes to this field

Group-based parent training programmes for improving emotional and behavioural adjustment in young children

BackgroundEmotional and behavioural problems in children are common. Research suggests that parenting has an important role to play in helping children to become well-adjusted, and that the first few months and years are especially important. Parenting programmes may have a role to play in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of infants and toddlers, and this review examined their effectiveness with parents and carers of young children.Objectives1. To establish whether group-based parenting programmes are effective in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of young children (maximum mean age of three years and 11 months); and2. To assess whether parenting programmes are effective in the primary prevention of emotional and behavioural problems.Search methodsIn July 2015 we searched CENTRAL (the Cochrane Library), Ovid MEDLINE, Embase (Ovid), and 10 other databases. We also searched two trial registers and handsearched reference lists of included studies and relevant systematic reviews.Selection criteriaTwo reviewers independently assessed the records retrieved by the search. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs of group-based parenting programmes that had used at least one standardised instrument to measure emotional and behavioural adjustment in children.Data collection and analysisOne reviewer extracted data and a second reviewer checked the extracted data. We presented the results for each outcome in each study as standardised mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Where appropriate, we combined the results in a meta-analysis using a random-effects model. We used the GRADE (Grades of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) approach to assess the overall quality of the body of evidence for each outcome.Main resultsWe identified 22 RCTs and two quasi-RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of group-based parenting programmes in improving the emotional and behavioural adjustment of children aged up to three years and 11 months (maximum mean age three years 11 months).The total number of participants in the studies were 3161 parents and their young children. Eight studies were conducted in the USA, five in the UK, four in Canada, five in Australia, one in Mexico, and one in Peru. All of the included studies were of behavioural, cognitive-behavioural or videotape modelling parenting programmes.We judged 50% (or more) of the included studies to be at low risk for selection bias, detection bias (observer-reported outcomes), attrition bias, selective reporting bias, and other bias. As it is not possible to blind participants and personnel to the type of intervention in these trials, we judged all studies to have high risk of performance bias. Also, there was a high risk of detection bias in the 20 studies that included parent-reported outcomes.The results provide evidence that group-based parenting programmes reduce overall emotional and behavioural problems (SMD -0.81, 95% CI -1.37 to -0.25; 5 studies, 280 participants, low quality evidence) based on total parent-reported data assessed at postintervention. This result was not, however, maintained when two quasi-RCTs were removed as part of a sensitivity analysis (SMD -0.67, 95% CI -1.43 to 0.09; 3 studies, 221 participants). The results of data from subscales show evidence of reduced total externalising problems (SMD -0.23, 95% CI -0.46 to -0.01; 8 studies, 989 participants, moderate quality evidence). Single study results show very low quality evidence of reductions in externalising problems hyperactivity-inattention subscale (SMD -1.34; 95% CI -2.37 to -0.31; 19 participants), low quality evidence of no effect on total internalising problems (SMD 0.34; 95% CI -0.12 to 0.81; 73 participants), and very low quality evidence of an increase in social skills (SMD 3.59; 95% CI 2.42 to 4.76; 32 participants), based on parent-reported data assessed at postintervention. Results for secondary outcomes, which were also measured using subscales, show an impact on parent-child interaction in terms of reduced negative behaviour (SMD -0.22, 95% CI -0.39 to -0.06; 7 studies, 941 participants, moderate quality evidence), and improved positive behaviour (SMD 0.48, 95% CI 0.17 to 0.79; 4 studies, 173 participants, moderate quality evidence) as rated by independent observers postintervention. No further meta-analyses were possible. Results of subgroup analyses show no evidence for treatment duration (seven weeks or less versus more than eight weeks) and inconclusive evidence for prevention versus treatment interventions.Authors' conclusionsThe findings of this review, which relate to the broad group of universal and at-risk (targeted) children and parents, provide tentative support for the use of group-based parenting programmes to improve the overall emotional and behavioural adjustment of children with a maximum mean age of three years and 11 months, in the short-term. There is, however, a need for more research regarding the role that these programmes might play in the primary prevention of both emotional and behavioural problems, and their long-term effectiveness

Systematic Neighborhood Observations at High Spatial Resolution: Methodology and Assessment of Potential Benefits

There is a growing body of public health research documenting how characteristics of neighborhoods are associated with differences in the health status of residents. However, little is known about how the spatial resolution of neighborhood observational data or community audits affects the identification of neighborhood differences in health. We developed a systematic neighborhood observation instrument for collecting data at very high spatial resolution (we observe each parcel independently) and used it to collect data in a low-income minority neighborhood in Dallas, TX. In addition, we collected data on the health status of individuals residing in this neighborhood. We then assessed the inter-rater reliability of the instrument and compared the costs and benefits of using data at this high spatial resolution. Our instrument provides a reliable and cost-effect method for collecting neighborhood observational data at high spatial resolution, which then allows researchers to explore the impact of varying geographic aggregations. Furthermore, these data facilitate a demonstration of the predictive accuracy of self-reported health status. We find that ordered logit models of health status using observational data at different spatial resolution produce different results. This implies a need to analyze the variation in correlative relationships at different geographic resolutions when there is no solid theoretical rational for choosing a particular resolution. We argue that neighborhood data at high spatial resolution greatly facilitates the evaluation of alternative geographic specifications in studies of neighborhood and health

Relationship of objective street quality attributes with youth physical activity: findings from the Healthy Communities Study

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146411/1/ijpo12429.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146411/2/ijpo12429_am.pd