Developmental, Contextual, and Psychosocial Predictors of Weathering and Health among Rural African Americans in their Fourth Decade of Life

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Project Summary African Americans in the rural South are among the most disadvantaged populations in the US in terms of life expectancy, a consequence of morbidity from chronic diseases of aging (CDAs). Emerging evidence suggests that CDAs are conditions that develop over the lifespan, with pathogenic processes starting in childhood but manifesting clinically at older ages. Wear and tear from chronic stress, beginning in childhood and continuing throughout the life course, weathers multiple physiological systems, increasing CDA vulnerability. Since 2001, the Strong African American Families Healthy Adult Project (SHAPE) has followed a cohort of rural African American youth participating in an investigation of risk, resilience, and development. When participants were age 19, we expanded our investigations to address biological weathering. We found that exposure to family economic hardship and racial discrimination in late childhood and adolescence forecast biological weathering during emerging adulthood as evidenced by allostatic load, inflammatory activity, and epigenetic aging. For rural African Americans, the fourth decade of life has significant potential to affect biological weathering and CDA vulnerabilities for better or worse. The influences of poverty, community disadvantage, and racial discrimination combine to render rural African Americans’ transitions to productive young adult roles especially challenging and stressful. Despite challenging conditions, many SHAPE participants will maintain in good health and some may improve their health. During the next 5 years, SHAPE participants will be exposed to continued and, in some cases, amplified contextual stress. Some participants will evince escalation in their weathering trajectories and the emergence of health problems, whereas others will not. The proposed research is designed to investigate the reasons why by collecting two waves of additional data when SHAPE participants are ages 31 and 33. The data collection will involve biological markers of weathering, indicators of cardiometabolic health – metabolic syndrome (MetS) and insulin resistance (IR), and developmentally appropriate behavioral and psychosocial risk and protective factors. Our specific aims are to test hypotheses regarding: (a) the direct and indirect effects of contextual stressors endemic to rural Southern environments on indices of weathering and the emergence of MetS and IR, and (b) mechanisms that prevent stress exposure from affecting rural African American young adults' biological weathering and health. The young adult protective mechanisms on which we focus include health protective social ties and bonds, problem-focused coping styles, and protective racial identity.