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NewsSteven Haas and David Schaefer Awarded NIH Grant R21HD060927, Dynamics of Health and Adolescent Social Networks, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development The overarching goal of this project is to develop and test a dynamic model of the co-evolution of peer networks, health behavior, and psychological well-being, which can be used to better target health interventions. Researchers have long investigated the link between social networks and various aspects of health including depression and health behaviors. However, most of this work has viewed networks as fixed and exogenous. In this project we examine the ways in which health factors may actively influence network creation and evolution over time using recent advances in statistical modeling of dynamic network data. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth) and an actor-based model to investigate the relative contributions of social influence and peer selection processes in understanding the interrelationships between peer networks, psychological well-being and health behavior. The findings from this project will serve as a major contribution to the emerging research on social network dynamics as well as to long standing literature on peer effects on health. Specifically, this project makes three innovative contributions: (1) We explicitly model the likelihood of relationships forming based upon individual traits, including health behavior (selection), and differentiate this from changes in behavior as individuals assimilate to their friends (influence). In so doing, we investigate what types of adolescents are more at risk of selecting peers with particular health behavior or conversely are at risk of changing their behavior to conform to friends' behavior. (2) By using AddHealth, we are able to examine these questions in multiple schools that represent a wide range of contexts. (3) We utilize a series of computer simulations, whose parameters are estimated from empirical data, as a means to investigate multiple intervention strategies and evaluate their potential for reducing the prevalence of smoking, alcohol use, and depression. Cecilia
Menjivar delivered the Distinguished AKD Lecture at the ASA Meetings in San Francisco Eileen Diaz McConnell Awarded NIH grant R03HD058915: “Race, Ethnicity, Nativity and Housing Outcomes in Los Angeles.” National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, $145,037. The proposed project employs data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS) to examine differences by race and ethnicity in housing costs, homeownership rates, housing values and home equity for Latinos, Non-Hispanic Whites, and African Americans. The study will also examine disparities between immigrants from Mexico and Central America and the U.S. born in these four housing outcomes. Understanding more about the factors linked with the allocation of income to housing, homeownership, and the creation of household wealth have implications for whether families are able to afford health insurance, reside in safer, higher-quality housing, and survive unanticipated emergencies due to illness. Jennifer Glick Awarded NIH grant R21HD058141: Family, Migration Context, Development and Early School Outcomes Utilizing four waves of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), the analyses are designed to explore the socio-emotional and subsequent cognitive development among children in immigrant and nonimmigrant families. The research is unique in its multi-disciplinary approach, which combines theoretical perspectives of immigrant adaptation and child development. An assimilation framework, more frequently employed to assess generational differences in social and economic well-being among adolescents and adults, is combined with the ecological developmental framework, developed to understand the multiple contextual influences on children’s school readiness and successful transitions to formal schooling. The project also focuses on parental immigration context, including age at migration, race/ethnicity and language use and the community context in which young children are raised. Arusyak Sevoyan receives a Population Reference Bureau fellowship Arusyak Sevoyan, one of CePoD graduate students, was selected to be a fellow for the 2009-2010 year at the Population Reference Bureau Population Policy Fellows Program, which includes spending 2 weeks at a workshop at the PRB in Washington D.C. this summer, a pre-PAA workshop, some funds for her research, and preparing written and oral presentations for policy audiences based on her dissertation or other research. |
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