Michele Cooley-Strickland

Community Violence and Youth: Affect, Behavior, Substance Use, and Academics

Community violence is recognized as a major public health problem (WHO, World Report on Violence and Health,2002) that Americans increasingly understand has adverse implications beyond inner-cities. However, the majority of research on chronic community violence exposure focuses on ethnic minority, impoverished, and/or crime-ridden communities while treatment and prevention focuses on the perpetrators of the violence, not on the youth who are its direct or indirect victims. School-based treatment and preventive interventions are needed for children at elevated risk for exposure to community violence. In preparation, a longitudinal, community epidemiological study, The Multiple Opportunities to Reach Excellence (MORE) Project, is being fielded to address some of the methodological weaknesses presented in previous studies. This study was designed to better understand the impact of children’s chronic exposure to community violence on their emotional, behavioral, substance use, and academic functioning with an overarching goal to identify malleable risk and protective factors which can be targeted in preventive and intervention programs. This paper describes the MORE Project, its conceptual underpinnings, goals, and methodology, as well as implications for treatment and preventive interventions and future research.

Urban african american youth exposed to community violence: a school-based anxiety preventive intervention efficacy study

This study evaluated the efficacy of a school-based anxiety prevention program among urban children exposed to community violence. Students who attended Title 1 public elementary schools were screened. Ninety-eight 3rd–5th-grade students (ages 8–12; 48% female; 92% African American) were randomized into preventive intervention versus waitlist comparison groups. Students attended 13 biweekly one-hour group sessions of a modified version of FRIENDS, a cognitive-behavioral anxiety intervention program. Results indicated that both intervention and control groups manifested significant reductions in anxiety symptomatology and total exposure to community violence, along with improved standardized reading achievement scores. Additional gains observed only in the intervention group were increased standardized mathematics achievement scores, decreased life stressors, and reduced victimization by community violence. The intervention was equally efficacious for both genders and for children exposed to higher, compared to lower, levels of community violence. Implications for comprehensive, culturally and contextually relevant prevention programs and research are discussed.

Neighborhood environment and urban schoolchildren's risk for being overweight.

Purpose. Child and adolescent obesity is increasingly prevalent and predisposes risk for poor physical and psychosocial health. Physical and social factors in the environment, such as neighborhood disorder, may be associated with childhood obesity. This study examines the association between living in a disordered neighborhood and being overweight among a sample of urban schoolchildren. Design. Baseline interview data, including height, weight, and hip circumference, were obtained from 313 elementary school–aged participants in a community-based epidemiologic study. Setting. The setting was Baltimore, Maryland, a large metropolitan city. Subjects. Subjects were elementary school students ages 8 to 12 years. Measures. To assess neighborhood characteristics, independent evaluators conducted objective environmental assessments using the Neighborhood Inventory for Environmental Typology instrument on the block faces (defined as one side of a city block between two intersections) where the children resided. Analysis. Logistic regression models with generalized estimating equations were used to examine the association between neighborhood disorder and children being overweight. Results. Neighborhood disorder showed a trend toward a statistically significant association with being overweight during childhood (odds ratio [OR], 1.03; confidence interval [CI], .99–1.07; p = .07) in the unadjusted model. Gender was significantly associated with being overweight, with female gender increasing the odds of being overweight by 50% in the sample (OR, 1.50; CI, 1.18–1.92; p < .01). After controlling for race, age, and comparative time spent on a sport, multivariable analyses revealed that gender (adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 2.42; CI, 1.63–3.59; p < .01) and neighborhood disorder (AOR, 1.09; CI, 1.03–1.15; p < .01) were associated with being overweight. Further, an examination of interactions revealed girls (AOR, 2.40; CI, 1.65–3.49; p < .01) were more likely to be overweight compared with boys (AOR, 2.20; CI, 1.57–3.11; p < .01) living in neighborhoods with the same level of neighborhood disorder. Conclusion. Results suggest neighborhood hazards warrant additional consideration for their potential as obesogenic elements affecting gender-based disparities in weight among urban schoolchildren. Future studies in this area should include longitudinal examinations.

The Influence of Neighborhood Context on Exposure to and Use of Substances Among Urban African American Children

Substance use is a widespread problem among adolescents. According to the 2008 Monitoring the Future survey, almost half (45 %) of American youth have smoked cigarettes by the end of high school, 21 % of whom had tried them before the beginning of eighth grade; 72 % have consumed alcohol by the end of high school, with 39 % having done so by eighth grade; and half (47 %) of American children have tried an illicit drug by the time they leave high school (Johnston et al. 2009). However, most of the research on adolescent substance use has been conducted on primarily Caucasian samples (Lambert et al. 2004), leaving a paucity of research on substance use among ethnic minority adolescents (De La Rosa et al. 1993; Wallace et al. 1999). It is important to investigate substance use among ethnic minorities because racial and ethnic minority groups exhibit disproportionately adverse social outcomes associated with drug use, including poverty, violence, crime and arrest (REF). Prior research has shown that African American adolescents are less likely to smoke cigarettes (Felton et al. 1999; Kann et al. 1996) and consume alcohol (Blum et al. 2000) than their Caucasian peers. However, prevalence rates for drug use initiation by race/ethnicity indicate that while African Americans are less likely than Caucasians to initiate smoking tobacco and drinking by age 13, they are at greater risk of initiating cocaine and marijuana use at earlier ages (i.e., 17.2 %, 11.1 %, and 1.3 % for smoking, marijuana, and cocaine initiation before 13 years of age respectively (Kann et al. 1996).