"Dedicated to being healthy": Young adults' deployments of health-focused cultural capital

Health lifestyles of six Zhiguo ethnic groups in China: a latent class analysis

BACKGROUND

Zhiguo ethnic groups, commonly known as "the directly-entering-socialism ethnic groups", represent Chinese ethnic minorities who have undergone a unique social development trajectory by transforming directly from primitive societies to the socialist stage. In recent decades, significant lifestyle transformations have occurred among Zhiguo ethnic groups. Understanding their health lifestyles can play a strategic role in China's pursuit of universal health coverage. This study aims to examine patterns of health-related lifestyle among Zhiguo ethnic groups and explore whether sociodemographic features and specific indicators related to health status are associated with particular classes.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study was conducted in Yunnan Province, China, from July to December 2022. Stratified random sampling method was employed to recruit residents belonging to six Zhiguo ethnic groups aged between 15 and 64. Latent class analysis was performed to identify clusters of health-related behaviors within each ethnic group. Logistic regression was utilized to determine the predictors of health lifestyles.

RESULTS

A total of 1,588 individuals from the Zhiguo ethnic groups participated in this study. Three latent classes representing prevalent health lifestyles among the Zhiguo ethnic groups were identified: "unhealthy lifestyle" (31.80%), "mixed lifestyle" (57.37%), and "healthy lifestyle" (10.83%). In the overall population, individuals belonging to the "healthy lifestyle" group exhibited a higher likelihood of being non-farmers (OR: 2.300, 95% CI: 1.347-3.927), women (OR: 21.459, 95% CI: 13.678-33.667), married individuals (OR: 1.897, 95% CI: 1.146-3.138), and those residing within a walking distance of less than 15 min from the nearest health facility (OR: 2.133, 95% CI: 1.415-3.215). Conversely, individuals in the age cohorts of 30-39 years (OR: 0.277, 95% CI: 0.137-0.558) and 40-49 years (OR: 0.471, 95% CI: 0.232-0.958) showed a decreased likelihood of adopting a healthy lifestyle.

CONCLUSIONS

A considerable proportion of the Zhiguo ethnic groups have not adopted healthy lifestyles. Targeted interventions aimed at improving health outcomes within these communities should prioritize addressing the clustering of unfavorable health behaviors, with particular emphasis on single male farmers aged 30-49, and expanding healthcare coverage for individuals residing more than 15 min away from accessible facilities.

Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in the Timing of Initiating the HPV Vaccine in the United States: the Case of Southeast Asian Americans

Despite the availability of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, non-Latinx (NL) Southeast Asian Americans have the highest incidence of HPV-associated cervical cancer in the US. Little is known about NL-Southeast Asian Americans' HPV vaccination coverage due to being categorized under the "Asian American" monolith. Therefore, this study uses restricted data from the 2011-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to disaggregate NL-Southeast Asian Americans and compare this population's age-specific probabilities of initiating HPV vaccinations to two Asian American subgroups (NL-East Asian and NL-South Asian Americans) and NL-White, NL-Black, and Latinx Americans. Multinomial logistic regression models examine the differences in the timing of initiating the HPV vaccine series, late (ages 13-26) or never, relative to on-time vaccination (by age 12). NL-Southeast Asian Americans are significantly more likely to never vaccinate and to vaccinate late than NL-White, NL-Black, and Latinx Americans, relative to on-time vaccination. NL-Southeast Asian American boys/men are significantly more likely to never initiate the HPV vaccine than Latinx boys/men, relative to on-time vaccination. NL-Southeast Asian American girls/women are significantly more likely to never vaccinate and vaccinate late than NL-White, NL-Black, and Latinx girls/women, relative to on-time vaccination. There are significant gender differences in uptake among all racial and ethnic groups, except among NL-Southeast and NL-East Asian Americans. Disaggregated data on NL-Southeast Asian Americans helps scholars and public health officials uncover health disparities and improve health interventions. Targeted HPV vaccine promotion and services for this population are needed to mitigate current and future health disparities and promote health equity.

"Getting Moving" and Being "Active Fit": Class Differences and Similarities in Health-promoting Parenting through Children's Organized Athletic Activities

Parents are held increasingly responsible for acting intensively to protect their children's health through everyday decisions and practices. We add to this scholarship by considering how organized athletic activities, an important part of the lives of many children, help parents fulfill their responsibility to protect their children's health. Through qualitative analysis of 92 in-depth interviews with parents, we attend to how parents' class shapes their articulation of the relationship between their children's health and their extracurricular involvement, considering literature on the ubiquity of intensive parenting expectations and the possibility that health behaviors and understandings constitute health-related cultural capital. Contrary to previous research, overall, we find similarities across class in parents' understandings of the health benefits of organized athletic activities. We find that parents believe organized athletic activities protect their children's health from inactivity, excess technology usage, and fatness. We do find some class distinctions. Middle-class parents, and not working-class parents, believe that their children's athletic activities will instill a passion for exercise and staying in shape and give children the experience and knowledge to control their body size and promote their well-being through their lives. This may signal a transformation in the relationship between health-related parenting and class that could maintain middle-class children's advantage if it contributes to differences in health beliefs, narratives, or practices that are differentially rewarded by important institutions such as schools, the workplace, or the medical system.

The impact of socioeconomic status on health practices via health lifestyles: Results of qualitative interviews with Americans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds

We performed 55 qualitative interviews with Americans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds from a small city in the Northeast to better understand the complex process through which socioeconomic status (SES) influences the health practices persons carry out. We argue that SES not only influences health practices directly, but also via shaping interviewees' health lifestyles. We describe four connected ways that SES shapes interviewees' health lifestyles: (a) the impact of physical and mental illness on how much time, energy, and resources can be devoted to health; (b) the impact of social connections on opportunities to engage in healthy practices; (c) variation in interviewees' sense of control over health and health practices; and (d) how intentional and planned out interviewees' health lifestyles are. Although explored previously, the aim of this study is to examine how these elements come together to form into distinct styles of health shaped by the socioeconomic background of our respondents.

The formation of classed health lifestyles during youth: A two-generational, longitudinal approach

The topic of this article is the classed formation of health lifestyles in youth. Based on longitudinal interview data (41 youths, 17 of their parents) from two contrasting class contexts in Norway, we investigate how health lifestyles are reproduced across generations and during youth, focussing particularly on diet and physical activity. We find that young people's health lifestyles are powerfully shaped by social class and moulded over time in ways that may impact their further health trajectory. The health practices of upper-class young people are closely monitored; they are practically and emotionally scaffolded by their parents. Developing a rigorous health orientation, they come to view health as an investment for the future, intrinsically linked to achievement, discipline and identity. Working-class parents focus more on the child's autonomy in matters of diet and physical activity. Separating health practices from family life, their children's health orientation becomes more fragile and their children's health lifestyle trajectory more arbitrary and vulnerable to peer influence and marketised body cultures. Combining temporality, youth agency and relationality, it becomes evident that young people internalise their parents' health lifestyle, leaving room for different expressions of youth agency.

Distinction through distancing: Norm formation and enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic

The unequal spread of COVID-19 was accompanied by disparities in adherence to social distancing. Research is needed on social processes that facilitated widespread adherence to distancing, how they connected with existing resource access and belief systems, and how they potentially strengthened intergroup boundaries. We integrated insights from research on social norms and cultural capital to analyze early pandemic (April-August 2020) qualitative interviews with parents and their teenage children in two higher-resource communities in the United States. Our findings uncovered four interrelated processes that facilitated the rapid establishment of norms around distancing, concurrently strengthening group boundaries. Community members: 1) drew on existing cultural capital to smooth the establishment of new social norms, 2) associated social distancing with individual moral worth and community identity, 3) applied double standards that granted certain exceptions to ingroup members to maintain social cohesion, and 4) drew strong distinctions between their own and outsiders' social distancing behaviors and moral worth. Our findings articulate social processes that allowed for rapid cohesion around distancing and show how these mechanisms strengthened existing community social boundaries.

Health Lifestyle Theory in a Changing Society: The Rise of Infectious Diseases and Digitalization

Social change produces alterations in society that necessitate changes in sociological theories. Two significant changes affecting health lifestyle theory are the behaviors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the digitalization of society. The health-protective practices emerging from the ongoing pandemic and the recent parade of other newly emerging infectious diseases need to be included in the theory's framework. Moreover, the extensive digitalization of today's society leads to the addition of connectivities (electronic networks) as a structural variable. Connectivities serve as a computational authority influencing health lifestyle practices through health apps and other digital resources in contrast to collectivities (human social networks) as a normative authority. The recent literature supporting these features in an updated and expanded model of health lifestyle theory is discussed.

Testing conditionality with Bourdieu's capital theory: How economic, social, and embodied cultural capital are associated with diet and physical activity in the Netherlands

Although Bourdieu's capital theory emphasized that economic, social, and embodied cultural capital interact to shape health behavior, existing empirical research mainly considered separate associations of the three forms of capital. Our aim was to investigate if and how economic, social, and embodied cultural capital are conditional on each other in their associations with adults' diet and physical activity. Cross-sectional, self-reported data from the 2014 GLOBE survey of 2812 adults aged between 25 and 75 years residing in Eindhoven, the Netherlands were used. Step-wise multiple logistic regression models included economic, social, and embodied cultural capital and adjustment for potential confounders. The models estimated odds ratios of main effects and two-way interactions of the forms of capital with fruit consumption, vegetable consumption, sports participation, and leisure time walking or cycling. In the main effects models, embodied cultural capital was consistently positively associated with all outcomes. Social capital was positively associated with sports participation, fruit consumption, and vegetable consumption, and economic capital was positively associated with sports participation and vegetable consumption. In the two-way interaction models, having specific higher levels of both economic and social capital strengthened their positive association with sports participation. No other combinations of capital were conditional on each other. Economic and social capital were conditional on each other in their association with sports participation, so interventions that provide both economic and social support may be especially effective for increasing this type of physical activity. As its association was strong with all outcomes but not conditional on other forms of capital, embodied cultural capital may operate distinctly from economic and social resources. Policy that takes differences in embodied cultural capital into account or changes to the environment that dampen the importance of embodied cultural resources for health behavior may help improve both diet and physical activity.