Measuring the impact of structural racism and discrimination during adolescence on substance use, psychological distress

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Project Summary Our overarching goal is to study the unique and interactive effects of adolescent experiences with SRD on interactions with the criminal legal system, mental health substance use, and treatment-seeking in adulthood. We will also assess the buffering effects of hypothesized community resilience factors that may be leveraged to combat the effects of SRD. We will extend The Contexts Study, a large (n=6982), seven-wave panel study of public-school children in three racially diverse (37% Black; 50% White), predominantly rural counties in North Carolina. At wave one, collected in 2002, all 6th, 7th, and 8th graders attending a public school in the three counties were eligible; the final wave occurred when participants were in 10th-12th grade. Context includes extensive panel data on peer networks and comprehensive residential geocodes for participants. Today, participants are in their early 30s. We propose to collect one additional wave of survey data and augment existing data with administrative records. With data on adult outcomes, we will be uniquely positioned to understand and combat SRD and its negative effects on developmental trajectories from adolescence to adulthood. We will draw from a variety of data sources to construct innovative, multi-dimensional measures of SRD, capturing adolescent SRD exposure within schools, peer networks, and neighborhoods. To achieve this, measures will draw from adolescent peer network characteristics, students’ school records, public criminal records, the Census, county tax-value property assessments, Google Maps, the American Community Survey, and adolescent and adult surveys. Our specific aims are: Aim 1. Measure effects of SRD exposure on adolescent trajectories of mental health, substance use, and suspension or expulsion. SRD exposures include: racially segregated peer networks and neighborhoods, racially disproportionate disciplinary actions, neighborhood disadvantage, racially biased housing values and disproportionate penetration by predatory lenders. We hypothesize that cumulative and lagged SRD exposure during adolescence results in worse outcomes for Black but not White adolescents, and that Black individuals experiencing greater levels of SRD will have worse outcomes than Black individuals with fewer exposures. Aim 2. a) Measure the degree to which adolescent exposure to SRD explains mental health and treatment-seeking, substance use, and criminal legal system involvement in adulthood; b) Use mediation analysis to determine the extent to which SRD exposure during adulthood accounts for the effects of adolescent SRD on adult outcomes. We hypothesize that there will be unique effects of adolescent SRD exposure that are not fully explained by SRD exposure during emerging adulthood. Aim 3. Determine the extent to which the effects of adolescent SRD exposure on adult outcomes are moderated by community resilience factors (operationalized as residential stability, voluntary service organizations, mobilization, and collective efficacy). We hypothesize that effects of SRD exposure will be partially buffered by high community resilience during adolescence or adulthood.