Parental Criminal Justice Involvement & Substance Use among Puerto Rican Youth

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project is in response to RFA-DA-10-015: Support Opportunity for Addiction Research (SOAR) for New Investigators (R03). Our plan is to pursue a research program which will provide key information about the impact of the unprecedented rise in incarceration which has characterized the US over the past 30 years, making parental involvement with the criminal justice system (CJSI) a common event in the lives of disadvantaged youth. We propose a pilot study with the following specific aims: Aim 1: Demonstrate the feasibility of locating and re-contacting, after 5 years, families who participated in the Boricua Youth Study (BYS; R01 MH56401; PI: Bird) while living in the South Bronx with at least a parent with criminal justice system involvement (CJSI) and a age-gender matched control sample; and Aim 2: Examine the range of possible effect sizes representing the relationship between parental CJSI and alcohol use over time by adolescents and young adults of Puerto Rican background living in the South Bronx. The pilot study sample will include South Bronx BYS participants who had a parent with CJSI (N=145) and a matched group of participants whose parents had never been involved with the CJS (N=145). Because of the BYS design, the pilot study CJSI subsample will be representative of children of Puerto Rican background 5 - 13 years old living in the South Bronx in 2000. Updated information about participants' location, alcohol use and parental CJSI will be obtained. The SOAR proposed pilot study will apply a tracking methodology similar to the one currently being used in the RFMH-OMH pilot study (PI: CS Duarte), but it will target a different BYS subsample and will include the assessment of youth alcohol use and parental CJSI. The BYS included three waves of data (yearly assessments from 2001 to 2004) of children in the South Bronx and San Juan, Puerto Rico (N=2,491) using a structure diagnostic interview to assess substance use/abuse and psychiatric disorders together with a wide range of risk/protective factors. The purpose of this pilot information is to support a more comprehensive assessment of the relationship between parental CJSI and alcohol abuse in this sample, which will uniquely address early precursors directly informing preventive interventions for a population highly in need. Such an application will be closely linked to a NIDA funded longitudinal research program assessing the impact of parental CJSI also conducted by our research group and currently underway in the South Bronx (R01 DA023733 and R01 DA024029, PI: CW Hoven, Co-I: CS Duarte). PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The unprecedented rise in incarceration in the US during the last 30 years may be harmful to families, contributing to the intergenerational transmission of substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. The proposed project will generate pilot data to support the continuation of the longitudinal assessment of a highly informative sample. The focus on the impact of parental criminal justice system involvement and child alcohol use in a minority sample is a key step towards designing appropriate interventions for those most in need.