From Heterogeneity to Concentration: Latino Immigrant Neighborhoods and Collective Efficacy Perceptions in Los Angeles and Chicago

Associations of Household and Neighborhood Contexts and Hair Cortisol Among Mexican-Origin Adolescents From Low-Income Immigrant Families

Although neighborhood contexts serve as upstream determinants of health, it remains unclear how these contexts "get under the skin" of Mexican-origin youth, who are disproportionately concentrated in highly disadvantaged yet co-ethnic neighborhoods. The current study examines the associations between household and neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES), neighborhood racial-ethnic and immigrant composition, and hair cortisol concentration (HCC)-a physiological index of chronic stress response-among Mexican-origin adolescents from low-income immigrant families in the United States. A total of 297 (54.20% female; mage = 17.61, SD = 0.93) Mexican-origin adolescents had their hair cortisol collected, and their residential addresses were geocoded and merged with the American Community Survey. Neighborhoods with higher Hispanic-origin and foreign-born residents were associated with higher neighborhood disadvantage, whereas neighborhoods with higher non-Hispanic White and domestic-born residents were associated with higher neighborhood affluence. Mexican-origin adolescents living in neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Hispanic-origin residents showed lower levels of HCC, consistent with the role of the ethnic enclave. In contrast, adolescents living in more affluent neighborhoods showed higher levels of HCC, possibly reflecting a physiological toll. No association was found between household SES and HCC. Our findings underscore the importance of taking sociocultural contexts and person-environment fit into consideration when understanding how neighborhoods influence adolescents' stress physiology.

What Do Your Neighbors Think About You? How Perceived Neighbor Attitudes Toward Latinos Influence Mental Health Among a Pregnant Latina Cohort

Latina women living in the USA experience disproportionately higher rates of psychological distress compared to their non-Latina White counterparts. Poor maternal mental health during pregnancy can contribute to intergenerational mental health disparities. Through this pathway, mothers' experiences, environments, and exposures (henceforth "exposures") during pregnancy become biologically embodied and can negatively affect the fetus and life-long developmental trajectories of her child. One of the exposures that can affect mother-offspring dyads is the neighborhood. With the goal of integrating anthropological and sociological theories to explain mental health disparities among pregnant Latina women, we explored how perceptions of neighbor attitudes may influence mental health during pregnancy. We analyzed self-reported responses from 239 pregnant Latina women in Southern California (131 foreign-born, 108 US-born) on their mental health and perceived attitudes of their neighbors using multiple linear regression models. Among foreign-born Latina women, living in neighborhoods with more favorable views of Latinos was associated with lower depression scores (pooled β =  - .70, SE = .29, p = .019) and lower pregnancy-related anxiety scores (pooled β =  - .11, SE = .05, p = .021), but greater state anxiety scores (pooled β = .09, SE = .04, p = .021). Among US-born women, there were no associations between neighbor attitudes and mental health. Overall, results suggest that social environments are correlated with mental health and that foreign-born and US-born Latinas have varied mental health experiences in the USA. Our findings highlight the importance of improving aspects of neighborhood cohesion as part of maternal-fetal care management.

County-Level Relationships Between Foreign-Born Residents, Latinos, Immigration Enforcement, and Child Maltreatment Report Rates in the United States, 2015-2018

U.S. Latino and foreign-born populations show lower child maltreatment report (CMR) rates despite their low socioeconomic positions, perhaps due to protective cultural factors within these populations. However, discriminatory Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities may attenuate such protection. We examined how ethnic and foreign-born compositions and local ICE activities were associated with community CMR rates, overall and within racial/ethnic groups (i.e., White, Black, Latino), and how these associations changed over time. We used national county-level data linking multiple administrative/archival data sources (i.e., CMR, Census, and ICE data) longitudinally for 2015 to 2018 across the United States. Multilevel (county-years, counties, and states) models estimated how percentages of Latino, percentages of foreign-born, and ICE arrest rates were related to overall and race/ethnicity-specific CMR rates among counties while adjusting for a range of demographic, socioeconomic, child care burden, health insurance, residential mobility, and urbanicity factors. Higher percentages of foreign-born residents within counties were significantly associated with lower CMR rates, both overall and within all racial/ethnic groups. These protective associations became significantly stronger over the study period. Higher percentages of Latino residents were significantly associated with lower total and White CMR rates but not with Black or Latino CMR rates. The interaction between the percentage of Latino residents and year was not significant. ICE arrest rates showed no significant associations with CMR rates. Our findings suggest that communities with more foreign-born and Latino residents may be more protective against CMRs. While the foreign-born and Latino concentrations were both independently predictive of decreased CMR rates, the protective associations of the foreign-born concentration were more consistent within racial/ethnic groups and grew stronger over time. These findings suggest the need to investigate community-level protective mechanisms that may explain these results. The null findings for ICE activity also require further research with alternative measures of discriminatory state action.

Expanding and Testing a Latinx Differential Coercion and Social Support Theory of Crime

We develop and test an extension of differential coercion and social support (DCSS) theory focused on Latinx individuals that employs measures of coercion and social support, both at the individual and environmental levels, that may be especially salient to this population. Data come from Latinx adults (n=863) randomly sampled from El Paso County, Texas and were analyzed using logistic and OLS regression analyses and employed the PROCESS Macro for assessing mediating relationships. Findings show moderate support for hypotheses. Specifically, a structural measure of social support (neighborhood social support) was inversely associated with family violence and mediated relationships between three separate measures of coercion and family violence, supporting predictions. However, two cultural measures of social support (enculturation to Mexico and familismo) did not demonstrate such relationships, failing to support predictions. Additional findings show that two of the three measures of coercion (neighborhood crime and disorder and police harassment) were inversely associated with family violence as predicted, but that a third measure, acculturation to the U.S., was not. Implications for DCSS theory and criminal offending for Latinx are discussed.

Social disorganization and new HIV diagnoses, 2013-2017, Florida: Rural-urban differences

PURPOSE

To compare the role of neighborhood social disorganization factors on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnosis rates in urban and rural areas in Florida, we conducted an ecologic study of HIV diagnosis rates during 2013-2017 and social disorganization components, including concentrated disadvantage, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential instability.

METHODS

Indices of social disorganization components were obtained from principal component analyses of American Community Survey variables for 910 postal codes. Rural/urban classification was based on the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Urban Commuting Area codes. Using multivariable linear regression, the relationship between social disorganization indices and HIV diagnosis rates was assessed.

FINDINGS

The only social disorganization index that was significantly higher in rural than urban areas was concentrated disadvantage. In rural areas, the concentrated disadvantage index was significantly associated with HIV diagnosis rates (P = .007) when controlling for the other social disorganization factors but was no longer significant after additionally controlling for prevalence of people with an HIV diagnosis who were not virally suppressed. In urban areas, even after controlling for prevalence of people with HIV who were not virally suppressed, lower male-to-female population ratios and higher scores of residential instability, concentrated disadvantage, and LatinX/immigrant density indices were associated with higher HIV diagnosis rates (all P < .01).

CONCLUSIONS

In addition to improving community levels of viral suppression, the community contextual environment, including the rurality of the environment, needs to be considered in strategies to end the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Trust in science, social consensus and vaccine confidence

While scholarly attention to date has focused almost entirely on individual-level drivers of vaccine confidence, we show that macro-level factors play an important role in understanding individual propensity to be confident about vaccination. We analyse data from the 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor survey covering over 120,000 respondents in 126 countries to assess how societal-level trust in science is related to vaccine confidence. In countries with a high aggregate level of trust in science, people are more likely to be confident about vaccination, over and above their individual-level scientific trust. Additionally, we show that societal consensus around trust in science moderates these individual-level and country-level relationships. In countries with a high level of consensus regarding the trustworthiness of science and scientists, the positive correlation between trust in science and vaccine confidence is stronger than it is in comparable countries where the level of social consensus is weaker.

Family Structure and Secondary Exposure to Violence in the Context of Varying Neighborhood Risks and Resources

Secondary exposure to violence in the community is a prevalent developmental risk with implications for youths' short- and long-term socioemotional functioning. This study used longitudinal, multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to consider how family structure, including parental instability, is associated with youths' secondary exposure to violence across diverse neighborhood contexts. Results showed that both living in a stable single-parent household and experiencing parental instability were associated with greater secondary exposure to violence compared with living in a stable two-parent household. The associations between having a single parent or experiencing parental instability and secondary exposure to violence were especially strong in neighborhoods with high levels of crime and strong neighborhood ties.

Do Co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods protect children with undocumented parents? Focusing on child behavioral functioning

Undocumented immigrants concentrate in ethnic enclaves, but little is known about the implications of living in such neighborhoods for children of undocumented immigrants. Using data on Mexican-origin children from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the decennial census, this paper examines the influence of co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods on children's behavioral functioning, and the extent to which parental nativity and documentation status moderate the neighborhood effects. Multilevel linear regression models show that the proportion of co-ethnics in the neighborhood apparently has no influence on Mexican-origin children. However, cross-level interactions reveal that the neighborhood context has differential effects by parental documentation status. The higher the percentage of co-ethnics in the neighborhood, the lower (better) the externalizing scores for children of undocumented immigrants, a pattern not observed for children of US-born or documented parents. The mechanism through which co-ethnic enclaves benefit children of undocumented Mexican immigrants deserves future research.

Neighborhood structural characteristics and Mexican-origin adolescents' development

Ethnic-racial and socioeconomic residential segregation are endemic in the United States, representing societal-level sociocultural processes that likely shape development. Considered alongside communities' abilities to respond to external forces, like stratification, in ways that promote youth adaptive functioning and mitigate maladaptive functioning, it is likely that residence in segregated neighborhoods during adolescence has both costs and benefits. We examined the influences that early adolescents' neighborhood structural characteristics, including Latino concentration and concentrated poverty, had on a range of developmentally salient downstream outcomes (i.e., internalizing, externalizing, prosocial behaviors, and ethnic-racial identity resolution) via implications for intermediate aspects of adolescents' community participation and engagement (i.e., ethnic-racial identity exploration, ethnic-racial discrimination from peers, and school attachment). These mediational mechanisms were tested prospectively across three waves (Mage w1-w3 = 12.79, 15.83, 17.37 years, respectively) in a sample of 733 Mexican-origin adolescents (48.8% female). We found higher neighborhood Latino concentration during early adolescence predicted greater school attachment and ethnic-racial identity exploration and lower discrimination from peers in middle adolescence. These benefits, in turn, were associated with lower externalizing and internalizing and higher ethnic-racial identity resolution and prosocial behaviors in late adolescence. Findings are discussed relative to major guidelines for integrating culture into development and psychopathology.

How is neighborhood social disorganization associated with diabetes outcomes? A multilevel investigation of glycemic control and self-reported use of acute or emergency health care services

Background

Diabetes management is influenced by a number of factors beyond the individual-level. This study examined how neighborhood social disorganization (i.e., neighborhoods characterized by high economic disadvantage, residential instability, and ethnic heterogeneity), is associated with diabetes-related outcomes.

Methods

We used a multilevel modeling approach to investigate the associations between census-tract neighborhood social disorganization, A1c, and self-reported use of acute or emergency health care services for a sample of 424 adults with type 2 diabetes.

Results

Individuals living in neighborhoods with high social disorganization had higher A1c values than individuals living in neighborhoods with medium social disorganization (B = 0.39, p = 0.01). Individuals living in neighborhoods with high economic disadvantage had higher self-reported use of acute or emergency health care services than individuals living in neighborhoods with medium economic disadvantage (B = 0.60, p = 0.02).

Conclusions

High neighborhood social disorganization was associated with higher A1c values and high neighborhood economic disadvantage was associated with greater self-reported use of acute or emergency health care services. Controlling for individual level variables diminished this effect for A1c, but not acute or emergency health care use. Comprehensive approaches to diabetes management should include attention to neighborhood context. Failure to do so may help explain the continuing disproportionate diabetes burden in many neighborhoods despite decades of attention to individual-level clinical care and education.

Trial registration

For this study, we used baseline data from a larger study investigating the impacts on patient-centered outcomes of three different approaches to self-monitoring of blood glucose among 450 adults with non-insulin dependent type 2 diabetes living in North Carolina. This study was registered as a clinical trial on 1/7/2014 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02033499).