Religious Involvement and Cognitive Functioning at the Intersection of Race-Ethnicity and Gender Among Midlife and Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between religious involvement and cognitive functioning at the intersections of race-ethnicity and gender among midlife and older adults, and to determine if psychosocial factors help explain this relationship. METHOD: The sample included 14,037 adults aged 50+ from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We utilized measures from the HRS 2010 and 2012 Core interviews and Leave-Behind questionnaires and estimated our models using linear regression. RESULTS: Compared to individuals who frequently attended religious services, infrequent religious service attendance was related to poorer cognitive functioning. Religiosity was inversely associated with cognitive functioning at baseline, but the relationship varied by race/gender subgroup. Greater religiosity was associated with better cognitive functioning among Black women, but lower cognitive functioning among White men and women. Psychosocial factors did little to explain the inverse association between religiosity and cognitive functioning. DISCUSSION: Results suggest the association between religious involvement and cognitive functioning is varied and complex, and largely dependent on important social identities. The findings have important implications for investigating health-protective factors, like religious involvement, using an intersectional perspective.

Black US college women's strategies of sexual self-protection.

While previous scholarship on the sexual practices of college students in the USA has explored how the co-constitution of whiteness, economic privilege and gender inequality are central to 'hooking up', less attention has been paid to how the sexual culture of predominantly white universities shape Black college women's sexual practices. In this article, we use an intersectional theoretical framework informed by Black feminism to analyse interviews with Black, cisgender, heterosexual women, aged 18-22, attending a university in the south-eastern USA. We explore how they interpret the university's sexual culture and in turn how that informs their sexual decision-making. We find that the intersection of racism and sexism limits Black college women's sexual partner options and leads them to pursue sexual relationships outside the university setting. While most do not engage in committed romantic relationships with off-campus partners, they do engage in a range of strategies to protect their social, emotional and sexual well-being. The study findings expand the scholarship on hook-up culture by centring the narratives of a group often excluded from the literature.

Disparities in Diabetes by Education and Race/Ethnicity in the U.S., 1973-2012.

INTRODUCTION: Diabetes mellitus incidence has more than doubled in the U.S. over the past 2 decades. Not all sectors of the population have experienced the increase proportionally. The goal of this study was to determine if disparities in diabetes by education and race/ethnicity have increased over time, and if there are differences by gender and birth cohort. METHODS: Repeated cross-sectional data were used from the 1973-2012 National Health Interview Survey of adults aged 25-84 years. Logistic regression models were run and predicted probabilities were calculated to determine if disparities in self-reported diabetes by education and race/ethnicity changed over time, by gender and birth cohort (birth before 1946, 1946-1970, 1971 or after). Analyses were conducted in 2014-2015. RESULTS: Relationships between education or race/ethnicity and diabetes were modified by time for people born before 1971, with stronger effect modification for women than men. Inequalities in diabetes prevalence grew over time, although the magnitude of disparities was smaller for the 1946-1970 cohort. For example, in 2005-2012, the gap in diabetes prevalence for women with the highest and lowest levels of education was 12.7% for pre-1946 versus 7.9% for 1946-1970. Similar trends were seen for differences between non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks or Hispanics. Results were inconclusive for the youngest cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Diabetes disparities are evident. Smaller differences in later cohorts may indicate that large structural changes in society (e.g., Civil Rights movement, increased educational and economic opportunities) have benefited later generations.

My Body is a Temple: Eating Disturbances, Religious Involvement, and Mental Health Among Young Adult Women.

A growing body of the literature outlines the undesirable mental health consequences of eating disturbances. However, little attention has been given to the possible mitigating effects of cultural institutions, such as religion, in the lives of women suffering from such pathologies. Our work contributes to the literature by (a) outlining a series of arguments linking eating disturbances, religion, and mental health; (b) specifying two conceptual models of these relationships; and (c) testing relevant hypotheses using data on a large nationwide sample of young women. Results indicate that religious involvement-organizational, non-organizational, and subjective religiousness-moderates the effects of eating disturbances on mental health, particularly for self-esteem. Study limitations are identified and several promising directions for future research are discussed.