A qualitative analysis of the social and cultural contexts that shape screen time use in Latino families living on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand how first generation Latino parents, whose primary language is Spanish and live in a colonia on the U.S.-Mexico border, use screen time in their homes.Methods: A purposeful sampling approach was used to recruit eligible parents of pre-adolescents (ages 9-14) who were native Spanish speakers, and living on the U.S.-Mexico border. Three focus groups in Spanish (two with mothers and one with fathers) were conducted. Data were codified using a general inductive approach based on grounded theory. A consensus process was repeated until a final codebook was developed.Results: Screen time allowed parents to foster familismo (family cohesiveness and bonding) and respeto (respect). Parents knew that a healthy balance of media use is important, but broader social contexts (marital discord and economics) challenged the enforcement of familial screen time rules and parents were often permissive.Conclusions: Our study addressed research gaps by examining the understudied social and cultural contexts (practices, routines, rules, and beliefs) that shape children's screen time use among a sample of Latino immigrants living on the U.S.-Mexico border. This sample of parents indicated that familismo and respeto (i.e., cohesiveness and bonding) influence familial decision-making including screen time.

¡Activate Ya! Co-learning about school-based tobacco prevention and physical activity promotion in secondary school students in Uruguay.

PURPOSE: ¡Activate Ya! was a group-randomized controlled intervention trial aimed at developing and evaluating the impact of a school-based intervention on preventing cigarette smoking and promoting physical activity (PA) in secondary school students in Uruguay. Secondary aims were to evaluate the program's impact on students' smoking- and PA-related psychosocial risk and protective factors. METHODS: Sixteen schools and n = 654 students participated in the study. The one-year intervention included a classroom-based curriculum, an afterschool program, activity breaks, and final showcase event. A self-administered questionnaire measured outcomes at three time points. Fixed effects regression models tested for differences in outcomes by study condition. RESULTS: While positive intervention effects were found for selected psychosocial-related smoking outcomes, no impact on past-year smoking or smoking susceptibility was detected. Past 7-day PA, measured by the PAQ-C, was significantly higher among intervention school students overall (p = .048) and for girls (p = .03) at posttest, and intervention girls reported significantly higher athletic identity PA competence, friend and teacher PA support at posttest, and PA enjoyment at follow-up (p < .05). CONCLUSION: The positive short-term effects of ¡Activate Ya! on PA and related outcomes for girls support the utility of school-based health promotion in Uruguay. Additional research is needed to determine the most effective strategies to prevent tobacco use among students and promote PA among boys in this setting.

Exploring physical activity engagement in secondary school students in Montevideo, Uruguay: A qualitative study.

Physical activity provides multiple health and educational benefits to children and youth, yet the majority of young people across the globe, including adolescents in Uruguay, do not participate in sufficient physical activity. This study aims to further inform intervention efforts for promoting adolescent physical activity in Uruguay by exploring physical activity perceptions and practices as well as physical activity barriers and opportunities in a sample of public and private secondary school students living in and around Montevideo, Uruguay. A total of n=65 secondary school students, ranging in age from 11 to 15 years, participated in 12 focus groups. Despite generally favorable attitudes expressed by participants toward physical activity and identification of common physical activities, findings indicated several barriers for physical activity engagement in this sample of Uruguayan secondary school students -- which often vary by gender and SES, including: lack of access and availability of physical activity opportunities both within and outside of school time, lack of places as well as equipment and infrastructure for engagement in physical activity, and lack of time and competing activities such as video games. Key themes related to the importance of the social context for physical activity- especially for girls, as well as opportunities for physical activity, including the need for more afterschool programming, were also documented. These findings provide further context for understanding adolescent physical activity in Uruguay as well as direction for future intervention efforts.

School social cohesion, student-school connectedness, and bullying in Colombian adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Student-school connectedness is inversely associated with multiple health risk behaviors, yet research is limited on the relative contributions of a student's connectedness with school and an overall context of school social cohesion to peer victimization/bullying. PURPOSE: We examined associations of perceived school cohesion and student-school connectedness with physical victimization, verbal victimization, and social exclusion in the past six months in adolescents in grades 6-11 (N = 774) attending 11 public and private urban schools in Colombia. METHODS: Cross-sectional data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed using mixed-effects linear regression models. RESULTS: Higher perceived school cohesion was inversely related with exposure to three bullying types examined (p < 0.05); student-school connectedness was negatively related to verbal victimization among girls only (p < 0.01). In full models, school cohesion maintained inverse associations with three bullying types after controlling for student-school connectedness (p ≤ 0.05). CONCLUSION: Enhancing school cohesion may hold benefits for bullying prevention beyond a student's individual school connectedness.

Experimenting with cigarettes and physical activity among Mexican origin youth: a cross sectional analysis of the interdependent associations among sensation seeking, acculturation, and gender.

BACKGROUND: Sensation seeking tendencies tend to manifest during adolescence and are associated with both health-compromising behaviors and health-enhancing behaviors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between sensation seeking and physical activity, a health-enhancing behavior, and between sensation seeking and experimenting with cigarettes, a health compromising-behavior, among a cohort of Mexican origin adolescents residing in the United States with different levels of acculturation. METHODS: In 2009, 1,154 Mexican origin youth (50.5% girls, mean age 14.3 years (SD = 1.04)) provided data on smoking behavior, physical activity, linguistic acculturation, and sensation seeking. We conducted Pearson's χ2 tests to examine the associations between categorical demographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age, country of birth and parental educational attainment) and both cigarette experimentation and physical activity and Student's t-tests to examine mean differences on the continuous variables (i.e. sensation seeking subscale) by the behaviors. We examined mean differences in the demographic characteristics, acculturation, and both behaviors for each of the sensation seeking subscales using analysis of variance (ANOVA). To examine relationships between the sensation seeking subscales, gender, and both behaviors, at different levels of acculturation we completed unconditional logistic regression analyses stratified by level of acculturation. RESULTS: Overall, 23.3% had experimented with cigarettes and 29.0% reported being physically active for at least 60 minutes/day on at least 5 days/week. Experimenting with cigarettes and being physically active were more prevalent among boys than girls. Among girls, higher levels of sensation seeking tendencies were associated with higher levels of acculturation and experimentation with cigarettes, but not with physical activity. Among boys, higher levels of sensation seeking tendencies were associated with higher levels of acculturation, experimenting with cigarettes and being physically active. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that interventions designed to prevent smoking among Mexican origin youth may need to address social aspects associated with acculturation, paying close attention to gendered manifestations of sensation seeking.

HIV/AIDS treatment adherence in economically better off women in Colombia.

Studies on HIV/AIDS treatment adherence have been carried out in a limited number of geographic settings, but few studies have explored it in people of higher socioeconomic status in Latin America. This qualitative study explored and compared determinants of adherence behaviors among 52 HIV-positive Colombian women in medium and high socioeconomic positions (SPs). Findings indicated that the two SP groups reported high adherence behaviors related to taking medication, following a diet, and executing lifestyle changes in line with healthcare providers' recommendations. Nevertheless, differences were observed between the two groups. While women with a medium SP disclosed their diagnosis, were empowered, and had acceptable access to economic resources that resulted in favorable adherence, their better off counterparts tended to hide their status and made a conscious effort to keep their adherence behaviors in secret due to HIV-related stigma. More studies on adherence of people living with HIV/AIDS from high SPs should be conducted to better understand how psychosocial support can be provided and to advance the knowledge of how and why adherence practices in these groups are undertaken.

Parental influences on television watching among children living on the Texas-Mexico border.

PURPOSE: We examined the association of parental television (TV) rules and compliance with the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) recommendations of

A descriptive study of youth risk behavior in urban and rural secondary school students in El Salvador.

BACKGROUND: Adolescence is an important stage of life for establishing healthy behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyles that contribute to current and future health. Health risk behavior is one indicator of health of young people that may serve both as a measure of health over time as well as a target for health policies and programs. This study examined the prevalence and distribution of youth health risk behaviors from five risk behavior domains-aggression, victimization, depression and suicidal ideation, substance use, and sexual behaviors-among public secondary school students in central El Salvador. METHODS: We employed a multi-stage sampling design in which school districts, schools, and classrooms were randomly selected. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire based on the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Sixteen schools and 982 students aged 12-20 years participated in the study. RESULTS: Health risk behaviors with highest prevalence rates included: engagement in physical fight (32.1%); threatened/injured with a weapon (19.9%); feelings of sadness/hopelessness (32.2%); current cigarette use (13.6%); and no condom use at last sexual intercourse (69.1%). Urban and male students reported statistically significant higher prevalence of most youth risk behaviors; female students reported statistically significant higher prevalence of feelings of sadness/hopelessness (35.6%), suicidal ideation (17.9%) and, among the sexually experienced, forced sexual intercourse (20.6%). CONCLUSION: A high percentage of Salvadoran adolescents in this sample engaged in health risk behaviors, warranting enhanced adolescent health promotion strategies. Future health promotion efforts should target: the young age of sexual intercourse as well as low condom use among students, the higher prevalence of risk behaviors among urban students, and the important gender differences in risk behaviors, including the higher prevalence of reported feelings of sadness, suicidal ideation and forced sexual intercourse among females and higher sexual intercourse and substance use among males. Relevance of findings within the Salvadoran and the cross-national context and implications for health promotion efforts are discussed.

Perceived parental monitoring and health risk behavior among public secondary school students in El Salvador.

Although parental monitoring has received considerable attention in studies of U.S. adolescents, few published studies have examined how parents' knowledge of their children's whereabouts may influence health risk behaviors in adolescents living in Latin America. We investigated the association between perceived parental monitoring and substance use, fighting, and sexual behaviors in rural and urban Salvadoran adolescents (n = 982). After adjusting for several sociodemographic covariates, multilevel regression analyses indicated that students reporting low parental monitoring were between 2 to 3.5 times more likely to report risk behaviors examined. The promotion of specific parenting practices such as parental monitoring may hold promise for reducing adolescent risk behaviors in El Salvador.