Racial Differences in Activity Space Exposures and Everyday Perceptions of Safety Among Urban Youth.

PURPOSE: The everyday experience of safety promotes health and successful development during adolescence. To date, few studies have examined racial variation in the spatial determinants of in-the-moment perceived safety. METHODS: Drawing on data from the Columbus, Ohio-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (N = 1,405), we consider the influence of intraindividual variability in Global Positioning System-based exposure to both high-proportion White urban neighborhoods and neighborhood violence for the everyday location-based safety perceptions of Black and White youth (ages 11-17) as captured by ecological momentary assessment. RESULTS: Exposure to higher area-level violence reduces youths' safety perceptions. Momentary exposure to residentially White-dominated neighborhoods also reduces perceived safety, but only for Black youth who spend more time, on average, in White areas. In contrast, we observe some limited evidence that White youth perceive greater safety when in White neighborhoods if they spend more time in white neighborhoods on average. DISCUSSION: These findings point to the need for greater attention to in situ experiences in understanding the origins of racial disparities in health and wellbeing. For Black youth, a restricted focus on the consequences of residing in Black segregated neighborhoods may obscure potentially health consequential exposures beyond these areas.

Association between longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment experiences and adolescent substance use.

BACKGROUND: Although there is a well-established link between child maltreatment and adolescent substance use, it remains unclear if and how longitudinal patterns of maltreatment experiences are associated with substance use in adolescence. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the study was to examine how distinct patterns of longitudinal maltreatment experiences are associated with adolescent substance use. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: The participants were 899 adolescents from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN). METHODS: We conducted repeated measures latent class analysis (RMLCA) to identify patterns of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect from birth to age 17 and their relations to tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use at age 18. RESULTS: RMLCA identified three physical abuse classes (Stable low physical abuse; School age peak physical abuse; Physical abuse primarily in infancy/toddlerhood), two sexual abuse classes (Stable no/low sexual abuse; School age peak sexual abuse), and three neglect classes (High neglect in childhood; Neglect primarily in infancy/toddlerhood; Neglect primarily at school age). Adolescents in the school age peak physical abuse class showed greater alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use, compared to other physical abuse classes. Similarly, adolescents in the school age peak sexual abuse class showed greater substance use than those in the stable no/low sexual abuse class. Lastly, adolescents in the neglect primarily in infancy/toddlerhood class showed significantly less substance use than those in the other two neglect classes. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the importance of early intervention and ongoing maltreatment prevention.

Place-Based Developmental Research: Conceptual and Methodological Advances in Studying Youth Development in Context.

Scientists have, for some time, recognized that development unfolds in numerous settings, including families, schools, neighborhoods, and organized and unorganized activity settings. Since the turn of the 20th century, the body of mainstream neighborhood effects scholarship draws heavily from the early 20th century Chicago School of Sociology frameworks and have been situating development in neighborhood contexts and working to identify the structures and processes via which neighborhoods matter for a range of developmental outcomes, especially achievement, behavioral and emotional problems, and sexual activity. From this body of work, two new areas of developmental scholarship are emerging. Both areas are promising for advancing an understanding of child development in context. First, cultural-developmental neighborhood researchers are advancing neighborhood effects research that explicitly recognizes the ways that racial, ethnic, cultural, and immigrant social positions matter for neighborhood environments and for youths' developmental demands, affordances, experiences, and competencies. This body of work substantially expands the range of developmental outcomes examined in neighborhood effects scholarship to recognize normative physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, social, and cultural competencies that have largely been overlooked in neighborhood effects scholarship that espoused a more color-blind developmental approach. Second, activity space neighborhood researchers are recognizing that residential neighborhoods have important implications for broader activity spaces-or the set of locations and settings to which youth are regularly exposed, including, for example, schools, work, organized activities, and hang-outs. They are using newer technologies and geographic frameworks to assess exposure to residential neighborhood and extra-neighborhood environments. These perspectives recognize that time (i.e., from microtime to mesotime) and place are critically bound and that exposures can be operationalized at numerous levels of the ecological system (i.e., from microsystems to macrosystems). These frameworks address important limitations of prior development in context scholarship by addressing selection and exposure. Addressing selection involves recognizing that families have some degree of choice when selecting into settings and variables that predict families' choices (e.g., income) also predict development. Considering exposure involves recognizing that different participants or residents experience different amounts of shared and nonshared exposures, resulting in both under-and over-estimation of contextual effects. Activity space scholars incorporate exposure to the residential neighborhood environments, but also to other locations and settings to which youth are regularly exposed, like schools, after-school settings, work, and hang-outs. Unfortunately, the cultural-development and activity space streams, which have both emerged from early 20th century work on neighborhood effects on development, have been advancing largely independently. Thus, the overarching aim of this monograph is to integrate scholarship on residential neighborhoods, cultural development, and activity spaces to advance a framework that can support a better understanding of development in context for diverse groups. In Chapters I and II we present the historical context of the three streams of theoretical, conceptual, and methodological research. We also advance a comprehensive cultural-developmental activity space framework for studying development in context among children, youth, and families that are ethnically, racially, and culturally heterogeneous. This framework actively recognized diversity in ethnic, racial, immigrant, and socioeconomic social positions. In Chapters III-V we advance specific features of the framework, focusing on: (1) the different levels of nested and nonnested ecological systems that can be captured and operationalized with activity space methods, (2) the different dimensions of time and exposures or experiences that can be captured and operationalized by activity space methods, and (3) the importance of settings structures and social processes for identifying underlying mechanisms of contextual effects on development. Structures are setting features related to the composition and spatial arrangement of people and institutions (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage, ethnic/racial compositions). Social processes represent the collective social dynamics that take place in settings, like social interactions, group activities, experiences with local institutions, mechanisms of social control, or shared beliefs. In Chapter VI, we highlight a range of methodological and empirical exemplars from the United States that are informed by our comprehensive cultural-developmental activity space framework. These exemplars feature both quantitative and qualitative methods, including method mixing. These exemplars feature both quantitative and qualitative methods, including method mixing. The exemplars also highlight the application of the framework across four different samples from populations that vary in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), geographic region, and urbanicity. They capture activity space characteristics and features in a variety of ways, in addition to incorporating family shared and nonshared activity space exposures. Finally, in Chapter VII we summarize the contributions of the framework for advancing a more comprehensive science of development in context, one that better realizes major developmental theories emphasizing persons, processes, contexts, and time. Additionally, we offer a place-based, culturally informed developmental research agenda to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population.

Associations of depression and anxiety and adolescent telomere length.

BACKGROUND: Telomere length (TL), a biomarker of cellular aging, is influenced by adverse life experiences. Although depression and anxiety are associated with shorter TL in adults, the relationship in younger ages has received little attention. We examined relationships between depression and anxiety diagnoses and symptomatology and TL in adolescence, an important developmental window for early intervention. Sex differences in relationships were also examined. METHODS: Wave 1 survey and TL data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study were analyzed (N = 995). Depression and anxiety diagnosis were parent-reported measures categorized as: current diagnosis, prior diagnosis, and never diagnosed (reference category). Depressive symptoms were measured via adolescent-report using nine items from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale, short form. Anxiety symptoms were measured via adolescent-report using eight items from the pediatric anxiety scale obtained from the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System. Genomic DNA was isolated from 500 µL saliva via ethanol precipitation. Genomic DNA TL was assessed using monoplexed quantitative polymerase chain reactions. Relative T/S quantities were calculated in accordance with established procedures. Covariates included sociodemographic factors (sex, age, race/ethnicity, caregiver marital status and education level, and household income), pubertal development, and season of collection. Descriptive and multivariable linear regression analyses were conducted, including an examination of sex as a moderator in the relationships between depression, anxiety, and TL. RESULTS: In multivariable analysis, adolescents with a current depression diagnosis (b = -0.26, p < .05), but not a prior diagnosis (b =0.05, p > .05) had shorter TL than those who were never diagnosed; higher depressive symptom scores were associated with shorter TL (b = -0.12, p < .05). No significant associations were found between anxiety diagnosis and TL; however, higher anxiety symptom scores were associated with shorter TL (b = -0.14, p < .01). Sex did not significantly moderate any of the relationships between depression, anxiety and TL. CONCLUSIONS: Depression and anxiety were associated with shorter TL in this diverse community sample of adolescents and the findings highlight the potential for impaired mental health to contribute to cellular senescence as early as adolescence. Prospective research on the long-term effect of depression and anxiety occurring earlier in the life span on TL over time is needed, including examination of potential mechanisms that may accelerate or buffer the negative effects of impaired mental health on TL.

Everyday perceptions of safety and racial disparities in hair cortisol concentration.

OBJECTIVE: Black-White disparities in physiological stress during adolescence are increasingly evident but remain incompletely understood. We examine the role of real-time perceptions of safety in the context of everyday routines to gain insight into the sources of observed adolescent racial differences in chronic stress as measured by hair cortisol concentration (HCC). METHOD: We combined social survey, ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and hair cortisol data on 690 Black and White youth ages 11-17 from wave 1 of the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study to investigate racial differences in physiological stress. Individual-level, reliability-adjusted measures of perceived unsafety outside the home were drawn from a week-long smartphone-based EMA and tested for association with hair cortisol concentration. RESULTS: We observed a statistically significant interaction (p < .05) between race and perceptions of unsafety. For Black youth, perceived unsafety was associated with higher HCC (p < .05). We observed no evidence of an association between perceptions of safety and expected HCC for White youth. For youth who perceive their out-of-home activity locations to be consistently safe, the racial difference in expected HCC was not statistically significant. At the high end of perceived unsafety, however, Black-White differences in HCC were pronounced (0.75 standard deviations at the 95th percentile on perceived unsafety; p < .001). DISCUSSION: These findings call attention to the role of everyday perceptions of safety across non-home routine activity contexts in explaining race differences in chronic stress as assessed by hair cortisol concentrations. Future research may benefit from data on in situ experiences to capture disparities in psychological and physiological stress.

Paws on the Street: Neighborhood-Level Concentration of Households with Dogs and Urban Crime.

The formative work of Jane Jacobs underscores the combination of "eyes on the street" and trust between residents in deterring crime. Nevertheless, little research has assessed the effects of residential street monitoring on crime due partly to a lack of data measuring this process. We argue that neighborhood-level rates of households with dogs captures part of the residential street monitoring process core to Jacobs' hypotheses and test whether this measure is inversely associated with property and violent crime rates. Data from a large-scale marketing survey of Columbus, OH, USA residents (2013; n = 43,078) are used to measure census block group-level (n = 595) rates of households with dogs. Data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study are used to measure neighborhood-level rates of trust. Consistent with Jacobs' hypotheses, results indicate that neighborhood concentration of households with dogs is inversely associated with robbery, homicide, and, to a less consistent degree, aggravated assault rates within neighborhoods high in trust. In contrast, results for property crime suggest that the inverse association of dog concentration is independent of levels of neighborhood trust. These associations are observed net of controls for neighborhood sociodemographic characteristics, temporally lagged crime, and spatial lags of trust and dog concentration. This study offers suggestive evidence of crime deterrent benefits of local street monitoring and dog presence and calls attention to the contribution of pets to other facets of neighborhood social organization.

Racial Inequalities in Adolescents' Exposure to Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation, Collective Efficacy, and Violence.

In the United States, Black youth tend to grow up in remarkably less resourced neighborhoods than White youth. This study investigates whether and to what extent Black youth are moreover exposed to less resourced activity spaces beyond the home. We draw on GPS data from a large sample of urban youth in the Columbus, Ohio-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (2014-2016) to examine to what extent Black youth experience nontrivial, disproportionate levels of exposure to more disadvantaged and segregated contexts in their daily routines compared with similarly residentially situated White youth. Specifically, we estimate Black-White differences in nonhome exposure to concentrated disadvantage, racial segregation, collective efficacy, and violent crime. We find that Black youths' activity spaces have substantially higher rates of racial segregation and violent crime than those of White youth, and substantially lower levels of collective efficacy-even after accounting for a host of individual- and home neighborhood-level characteristics. We find more modest evidence of differences in exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage. These findings have important implications for neighborhood-centered interventions focused on youth well-being and the contextual effects and segregation literatures more generally.

Geographic Isolation, Compelled Mobility, and Everyday Exposure to Neighborhood Racial Composition Among Urban Youth.

Foundational urban social theories view heterogeneity of exposure to spatial and social contexts as essential aspects of the urban experience. In contrast, contemporary neighborhood research emphasizes the isolation of city dwellers - particularly residents of racially segregated neighborhoods. Using geospatial data on a sample of youth from the 2014-16 Columbus, OH-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study, we explore the extent to which the neighborhood locations of everyday activities vary with respect to residential racial composition. In the context of segregated US metro areas, the geographic isolation approach expects home census tract racial composition to powerfully shape the racial composition of activity location neighborhoods. In this view, Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods are expected to spend the vast majority of their time exposed to similarly Black-concentrated neighborhoods. Consistent with an alternative compelled mobility approach, we find that Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods exhibit among the highest levels of heterogeneity in the racial composition of neighborhoods encountered. Moreover, Black youth residing in high proportion Black neighborhoods are expected to spend 39% of their non-home time (roughly 2.5 hours a day) in low proportion Black neighborhoods compared to 23% (1.5 hours) in high proportion Black neighborhoods. Exposures to low proportion Black neighborhoods among these youth are largely driven by organizationally-based resource seeking. These findings call into question the assumption that residence in Black segregated neighborhoods leads to homogeneously Black segregated neighborhood exposures and encourage theoretical development and data collection strategies that acknowledge the potential for significant heterogeneity in the everyday neighborhood experiences of urban youth.

Activity Locations, Residential Segregation, and the Significance of Residential Neighborhood Boundary Perceptions.

The inadequacies of residential census geography in capturing urban residents' routine exposures have motivated efforts to more directly measure residents' activity spaces. In turn, insights regarding urban activity patterns have been used to motivate alternative residential neighborhood measurement strategies incorporating dimensions of activity space in the form of egocentric neighborhoods-measurement approaches that place individuals at the center of their own residential neighborhood units. Unexamined, however, is the extent to which the boundaries of residents' own self-defined residential neighborhoods compare with census-based and egocentric neighborhood measurement approaches in aligning with residents' routine activity locations. We first assess this question, examining whether the boundaries of residents' self-defined residential neighborhoods are in closer proximity to the coordinates of a range of activity location types than are the boundaries of their census and egocentric residential neighborhood measurement approaches. We find little evidence that egocentric or, crucially, self-defined residential neighborhoods better align with activity locations, suggesting a division in residents' activity locations and conceptions of their residential neighborhoods. We then examine opposing hypotheses about how self-defined residential neighborhoods and census tracts compare in socioeconomic and racial composition. Overall, our findings suggest that residents bound less segregated neighborhoods than those produced by census geography, but self-defined residential neighborhoods still reflect a preference toward homophily when considering areas beyond the immediate environment of their residence. These findings underscore the significance of individuals' conceptions of residential neighborhoods to understanding and measuring urban social processes such as residential segregation and social disorganization.

Racial and Economic Adversity Differences in Stress Markers and Immune Function Among Urban Adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to racism and associated adversities, such as poverty, is hypothesized to contribute to racial inequities in health via stress and immune pathways. Furthermore, the effects of adversity may be more salient during sensitive developmental periods. Our study examined racial differences in stress and immune biomarkers during adolescence and the effects of exposure to economic adversity at distinct developmental time periods and cumulatively in accounting for potential racial differences. METHODS: Secondary analysis of the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study was conducted. Data were derived from self-administered surveys; interviews; smartphone-based, geographic-explicit ecological momentary assessment; stress biomarkers (evening salivary cortisol over six nights and hair cortisol); and immune biomarkers (salivary shedding of Epstein-Barr virus [EBV] DNA among EBV-positive adolescents). Current socioeconomic status measures included annual household income and caregiver education. Caregivers also reported experiences of bankruptcy, difficulty paying bills, receipt of food stamps/Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/electronic benefit transfer, and job loss when the child was of ages birth-5 years, 6-10 years, and 11 years or older. An affirmative response to any item was defined as exposure to economic adversity for that developmental time period (yes/no). A cumulative economic adversity measure was calculated as the sum of exposures across developmental periods (0 = never exposed to 3 = exposed across all time periods). Descriptive and multivariable regression analyses were conducted, accounting for covariates. RESULTS: Black/African American adolescents had higher salivary cortisol concentration, higher hair cortisol concentration, and an increased odd of salivary shedding of EBV DNA compared to White adolescents. Racial differences were not attenuated by the current socioeconomic status or economic adversity (developmental period or cumulatively). DISCUSSION: Our study provides evidence that stress and immune biomarkers differ by race as early as adolescence and may be one pathway through which racism and associated adversities contribute to racial health inequities. Further research on the contribution of multiple adversities beyond poverty to racial inequities in physiological stress and health is critical for informing effective prevention and intervention efforts.

Exposure to police-related deaths and physiological stress among urban black youth.

BACKGROUND: Emerging evidence indicates that exposure to police-related deaths is associated with negative health and wellbeing outcomes among black people. Yet, no study to date has directly examined the biological consequences of exposure to police-related deaths for urban black youth. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We employ unique data from the 2014-16 Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) study - a representative sample of youth ages 11 to 17 residing in the Columbus, OH area. A subsample of participants contributed nightly saliva samples for cortisol for up to six days, providing an opportunity to link recent exposures to police-related deaths within the residential county to physiological stress outcomes during the study period (N = 585). We examine the effect of exposure to a recent police-related death in the same county on the physiological stress (nightly cortisol) levels of black youth. We find evidence of elevated average levels of nightly cortisol (by 46%) for black boys exposed to a police-related death of a black victim in the 30 days prior to the subject's cortisol collection. We find no evidence of police-related death effects on the physiological stress levels of black girls or white youth. CONCLUSIONS: These analyses indicate that police-related deaths influence the biological functioning of black boys, with potential negative consequences for health. We consider the implications of exposure to lethal police violence among black boys for understanding racial disparities in health more broadly.

Human Mobility and Crime: Theoretical Approaches and Novel Data Collection Strategies.

This review outlines approaches to explanations of crime that incorporate the concept of human mobility-or the patterns of movement throughout space of individuals or populations in the context of everyday routines-with a focus on novel strategies for the collection of geographically referenced data on mobility patterns. We identify three approaches to understanding mobility-crime linkages: (a) Place and neighborhood approaches characterize local spatial units of analysis of varying size with respect to the intersection in space and time of potential offenders, victims, and guardians; (b) person-centered approaches emphasize the spatial trajectories of individuals and person-place interactions that influence crime risk; and (c) ecological network approaches consider links between persons or collectivities based on shared activity locations, capturing influences of broader systems of interconnection on spatial- and individual-level variation in crime. We review data collection strategies for the measurement of mobility across these approaches, considering both the challenges and promise of mobility-based research for criminology.

Neighborhoods, Activity Spaces, and the Span of Adolescent Exposures.

Since the inception of urban sociology, the "neighborhood" has served as the dominant context thought to capture developmentally significant youth experiences beyond the home. Yet no large-scale study has examined patterns of exposure to the most commonly used operationalization of neighborhood - the census tract - among urban youth. Using smartphone GPS data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study (N=1405), we estimate the amount of time youth spend in residential neighborhoods and consider explanations for variation in neighborhood exposure. On average, youth (ages 11 to 17) spend 5.7% of their waking time in their neighborhood but not at home, 60% at home, and 34.3% outside their neighborhood. Multilevel negative binomial regression models indicate that residence in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods is associated with less time in neighborhood. Higher levels of local violence and the absence of a neighborhood school the youth is eligible to attend are negatively associated with time in neighborhood and mediate the concentrated disadvantage effect. Fractional multinomial logit models indicate that higher violence is linked with increased time at home while school absence is associated with increased outside-neighborhood time. Theoretical development and empirical research on neighborhood effects should incorporate findings on the extent and nature of neighborhood and broader activity space exposures among urban youth.

Beyond Activity Space: Detecting Communities in Ecological Networks.

Emerging research suggests that the extent to which activity spaces - the collection of an individual's routine activity locations - overlap provides important information about the functioning of a city and its neighborhoods. To study patterns of overlapping activity spaces, we draw on the notion of an ecological network, a type of two-mode network with the two modes being individuals and the geographic locations where individuals perform routine activities. We describe a method for detecting "ecological communities" within these networks based on shared activity locations among individuals. Specifically, we identify latent activity pattern profiles, which, for each community, summarize its members' probability distribution of going to each location, and community assignment vectors, which, for each individual, summarize his/her probability distribution of belonging to each community. Using data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context (AHDC) Study, we employ latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) to identify activity pattern profiles and communities. We then explore differences across neighborhoods in the strength, and within-neighborhood consistency of community assignment. We hypothesize that these aspects of the neighborhood structure of ecological community membership capture meaningful dimensions of neighborhood functioning likely to co-vary with economic and racial composition. We discuss the implications of a focus on ecological communities for the conduct of "neighborhood effects" research more broadly.

Syringe Service Program Utilization, Barriers, and Preferences for Design in Rural Appalachia: Differences between Men and Women Who Inject Drugs.

Background People who inject drugs (PWID) in rural areas of the United States have had limited access to syringe service programs (SSP). Rural SSP have recently surged, but accompanying research is lacking about PWID utilization, barriers, and preferences for SSP design and how those preferences vary by gender. Methods: Interviewer-administered surveys elicited information about utilization, barriers, and preferences for SSP design from 234 PWID recruited using respondent-driven sampling in Appalachian, Kentucky. Gender differences among reported barriers to utilizing SSP and preferences for program design were explored using Mantel-Haenszel chi-square tests. Results: Overall, 49% of PWID had ever utilized an SSP. The most common reasons for not utilizing an SSP were lack of awareness (23%), fear of being seen or disclosing drug use (19%), and lack of need (19%). The most preferred SSP design was located within a health department (74%) and operating during afternoon hours (66%). Men were more likely than women to prefer SSP in health departments (80% vs. 65%, p = 0.01), while more women than men preferred staffing by health department personnel (62% vs. 46%, p = 0.02). Women were less likely to favor evening hours (55% vs. 70%, p = 0.02). Fewer women wanted SSP nurses (78% vs. 90%, p = 0.01), social workers (11% vs. 24%, p = 0.01), or people who use drugs (20% vs 34%, p = 0.02) to staff SSP. Conclusions: Despite recent scale-up, SSP in Appalachia remain under-utilized. PWID were open to a range of options for SSP design and staffing, though there were variations by gender. Implementation research that identifies best strategies for tailored SSP scale-up in rural settings should be considered.

Feasibility and Validity of Geographically Explicit Ecological Momentary Assessment With Recall-Aided Space-Time Budgets.

We employ data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study-a representative sample of urban youth ages 11-17 in and around the Columbus, OH area-to investigate the feasibility and validity of smartphone-based geographically explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA). Age, race, household income, familiarity with smartphones, and self-control were associated with missing global positioning systems (GPS) coverage, whereas school day was associated with discordance between percent of time at home based on GPS-only versus recall-aided space-time budget data. Fatigue from protocol compliance increases missing GPS across the week, which results in more discordance. Although some systematic differences were observed, these findings offer evidence that smartphone-based GEMA is a viable method for the collection of activity space data on urban youth.

Hair cortisol and depressive symptoms in youth: An investigation of curvilinear relationships.

BACKGROUND: As the prevalence of depression is increasing among youth in the U.S., research on the utility of biomarkers in predicting depressive symptomatology is burgeoning. Hair cortisol may be a useful biomarker as it is a retrospective and longer-term measure of the mean cortisol level. However, studies have yet to examine the relationships between hair cortisol and depressive symptoms in samples of youth, and findings with adult samples are mixed. This study examined hair cortisol as a predictor of depressive symptoms, including the potential for nonlinear relationships. METHODS: A representative community sample of 432 adolescents aged 11 to 17 years was examined. Depressive symptoms were measured using a 9-item short-form of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale. Hair was cut from the posterior vertex region of the scalp using thinning shears. Hair was washed, minced, ground and assayed with Salimetrics® Cortisol Enzyme Immunoassay Kit. Hair cortisol levels were logged for statistical analysis. RESULTS: In multivariable regression analysis, no significant linear relationship was found in model 1 between hair cortisol and depressive symptoms (b= -0.036, se = 0.02, p = 0.13). In model 2, a marginally significant linear association (b= -0.044, se = 0.02, p-value = 0.06) and a significant curvilinear relationship (b = 0.039, se = 0.01, p-value = 0.005) were found between hair cortisol and depressive symptoms. The results were graphed depicting a u-shaped curve such that hair cortisol levels on the lower and higher end of the distribution predicted depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: The findings highlight the need to consider investigation of nonlinear associations between cortisol and depressive symptoms. Longitudinal mechanistic research is needed to elucidate the causal relationships between hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation and depressive symptoms as well as a better understanding of the biological mechanisms through which cortisol may contribute to depressive symptoms and psychopathology.

The magnitude and impact of tobacco marketing exposure in adolescents' day-to-day lives: An ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study.

PURPOSE: Research indicates that tobacco marketing contributes to higher pro-tobacco attitudes and behaviors among adolescents, but no studies have been able to assess the impact of real-world tobacco marketing exposures in real-time. The purpose of this study was to examine the magnitude and impact of tobacco marketing exposure on adolescents using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Our primary hypotheses were that (1) youth would most frequently report tobacco marketing at the retail points-of-sale and (2) greater exposures to tobacco marketing would be associated with more favorable tobacco-related attitudes, use, and expectancies. METHODS: Participants were adolescent males from rural and urban Ohio (N = 176, ages 11-16). For ten days, these adolescents were prompted at two-three random times/day to complete a brief smartphone-based survey about their exposures and responses to tobacco-related advertising. RESULTS: Adolescents reported exposures to tobacco marketing an average of 1.9 times over the 10-day EMA period, with over 10% seeing a tobacco advertisement 5 or more times. Reports of marketing exposures occurred most frequently at the point-of-sale; exposures were higher among tobacco users and rural adolescents. Consistent with hypotheses, marketing exposure was related to more positive attitudes to the tobacco advertisements, more tobacco use, and higher expectancies to use in the future. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these findings signal the magnitude of tobacco marketing exposures and their pernicious impact on youth. Findings underscore the importance of federal, state, and local-level tobacco regulatory policies to protect youth from the marketing that puts them at risk for a lifetime of nicotine addiction and tobacco-related diseases.

Early childhood family instability and immune system dysregulation in adolescence.

Exposure to stress is one way in which social disadvantages during childhood may alter biological and psychological systems with long-term consequences. Family social and economic conditions are critical for early childhood development and exposure to difficult family conditions may have lasting physiological effects. However, there is little research linking early childhood conditions with physiological indicators of stress and system dysregulation in adolescence. In this study, we assess how family social and economic instability that occurred in early childhood (birth to age 5) is associated with immune system dysregulation in adolescence, as indicated by DNA shedding of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). We utilize a biomarker of EBV obtained through saliva, a non-invasive method of collecting immune-system biomarkers, in 674 adolescents 11-17 years old. Multivariable regression results indicated that experiences of moving into a new parent/caregiver household or moving in with a grandparent during early childhood was associated with an estimated 100% increase in EBV DNA shedding among prior EBV-infected adolescents. Other measures of early childhood family instability, total number of family structure changes and economic insecurity, were marginally significant. Contemporaneous family conditions were not associated with adolescents' EBV DNA shedding.

Family contexts and sleep during adolescence.

Sleep deprivation among adolescents has received much attention from health researchers and policymakers. Recent research indicates that variation in sleep duration from night to night is associated with multiple health outcomes. While there is evidence that sleep deprivation is socially patterned, we know little about how social contexts are associated with nightly sleep variation during adolescence (a life course stage when nightly sleep variation is particularly high). Given the importance of family environments for influencing adolescents' sleep patterns, we hypothesized that disadvantaged family contexts would be associated with higher intra-individual variation (IIV) in nightly sleep duration, in addition to lower average nightly sleep duration. We tested these hypotheses in a diverse, population-based sample of 11-17 year-olds (N = 1095) from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context Study. Using survey and ecological momentary assessment data and a novel form of multi-level regression modeling (location-scale mixed modeling), we found that adolescents living in unmarried-parent, low SES, economically insecure, and high caregiver stress families had higher IIV in sleep than adolescents in families with more resources and less caregiver stress. There were fewer family effects on average sleep duration. This suggests family social and economic contexts are associated with an under-researched aspect of adolescent sleep, nightly variation, and may contribute to adolescent sleep problems with implications for their health and health disparities.