Short communicationDoes substance use moderate the association of neighborhood disadvantage with perceived stress and safety in the activity spaces of urban youth?
Introduction
Substance use has a detrimental effect on adolescent brain function and development (Lisdahl et al., 2015), and earlier use in adolescence has been found to be an indicator of substance use and misuse in emerging adulthood (Nelson et al., 2015). Evidence suggests that substance use among youth is associated with neighborhood economic disadvantage (Mason et al., 2009, Reboussin et al., 2015), particularly in urban areas where disadvantaged neighborhoods are also often associated with violent crime and other characteristics of neighborhood disorder, which can produce feelings of chronic psychological stress and a lack of safety (Brenner et al., 2013a, Latkin and Curry, 2003). Such neighborhoods also often lack the community support and resources that may buffer the deleterious health effects of stressful neighborhood conditions (Latkin and Curry, 2003). Substance use can serve as a coping mechanism for stressful environments (Jackson et al., 2009), and thus users may differ from non-users in their stress response to such environments (Schmeelk-Cone et al., 2003). Exposure to neighborhood disadvantage may be particularly problematic for urban African American youth, who are more likely to reside in poor, segregated neighborhoods, as compared to whites (Massey and Denton, 1993).
Few studies, however, have explicitly investigated the interactions of neighborhood disadvantage, perceptions of stress and safety, and substance use among urban, African American youth. Of those that have, most have employed recall-based survey measures or have been limited to the characteristics of subjects’ home neighborhoods (e.g., Brenner et al., 2013b). New methods integrating Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies with Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), referred to by Epstein et al. (2014) as Geographical Momentary Assessment (GMA), allow for the capture of perceived stress and safety in real-time and as georeferenced to an individual’s activity space, i.e., places visited outside the home on a routine basis (Mason et al., 2015, Stahler et al., 2013). Capturing exposure outside the home neighborhood is particularly important as research shows that the home and its immediate environs are typically considered safer places than elsewhere among urban youth, even among those residing in relatively disadvantaged neighborhoods (Wiebe et al., 2013). Activity space-based measures of neighborhood exposure capture the contexts of youth development more fully as compared to those utilizing only home neighborhoods (Browning and Soller, 2014, Mennis and Mason, 2011).
In the present study, we show how GMA is used to collect integrated data on substance use, momentary perceptions of stress and safety, and activity space exposure to neighborhood disadvantage among a sample of young, urban, primarily African American adolescents. Several research questions are addressed: First, is exposure to neighborhood disadvantage in the activity space associated with substance use? Second, is exposure to neighborhood disadvantage in the activity space associated with perceived stress and safety? And third, if so, does the association of exposure to neighborhood disadvantage with perceived stress and safety differ according to degree of substance use?
Section snippets
Recruitment and data collection
The present study uses the one year follow-up data from the Social-Spatial Adolescent Study, a longitudinal study based in Richmond, Virginia which examines peer network and geographic mechanisms of adolescent substance use. Study subjects (N = 248) were recruited between November 2012 and February 2014, with the majority of participants recruited from an adolescent medicine outpatient clinic. Criteria for study participation included being 13–14 years old, a registered clinic patient, and a
Results
Of the 139 adolescents in the sample, 57 (41%) are boys and 82 (59%) are girls, approximately half of whom are thirteen years old (N = 72) and half are fourteen (N = 67). African Americans comprise 89% (N = 123) of the sample. The AADIS values range between 2 and 55, with a mean of 11.7. The 139 subjects analyzed here do not differ significantly from the other 109 study participants in terms of age (χ2 = 0.64, p = 0.444), sex (χ2 = 0.589, p = 0.52), race (χ2 = 4.004, p = 0.41), or mean AADIS score (t = −1.153, p =
Discussion
These results generally agree with previous research (Brenner et al., 2013a, Reboussin et al., 2015, Wiebe et al., 2013) in finding that exposure of urban adolescents to greater neighborhood disadvantage relative to the home neighborhood is associated with higher stress and lower perceived safety, plausibly due to the association of violence and other stressful conditions of neighborhood disorder with neighborhood disadvantage. The association between relative neighborhood disadvantage and
Role of funding source
This research was supported by grant No. 1R01 DA031724-01A1 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or the National Institutes of Health.
Contributors
Drs. Mennis and Mason conceptualized the study. Dr. Mason directed data collection. Dr. Way developed the computer program to enable the EMA. Dr. Mennis conducted the statistical analysis and prepared the manuscript. All authors contributed to writing and editing the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
No conflict declared.
Acknowledgement
We thank Dr. Adam Davey for his statistical expertise.
References (22)
- et al.
Real-time tracking of neighborhood surroundings and mood in urban drug misusers: application of a new method to study behavior in its geographical context
Drug Alcohol Depend.
(2014) - et al.
The relationship of place to substance use and perceptions of risk and safety in urban adolescents
J. Environ. Psychol.
(2009) - et al.
Young urban adolescents’ activity space, peers, and substance use
Health Place
(2015) - et al.
Social and geographic contexts of adolescent substance use: the moderating effects of age and gender
Soc. Networks
(2012) - et al.
The role of neighborhood in urban black adolescent marijuana use
Drug Alcohol Depend.
(2015) - et al.
Fears of violence during morning travel to school
J. Adolesc. Health
(2013) - et al.
Neighborhood context and perceptions of stress over time: an ecological model of neighborhood stressors and interpersonal and interpersonal resources
Am. J. Commun. Psychol.
(2013) - et al.
The physiological expression of living in disadvantaged neighborhoods for youth
J. Youth Adolesc.
(2013) - et al.
Moving beyond neighborhood: activity spaces and ecological networks as contexts for youth development
Cityscape
(2014) - et al.
Race and unhealthy behaviors: chronic stress, the HPA axis, and physical and mental health disparities over the life course
Am. J. Public Health
(2009)
Stressful neighborhoods and depression: a prospective study of the impact of neighborhood disorder
J. Health Soc. Behav.
Cited by (39)
Everyday perceptions of safety and racial disparities in hair cortisol concentration
2023, PsychoneuroendocrinologyGeographic ecological momentary assessment methods to examine spatio-temporal exposures associated with marijuana use among young adults: A pilot study
2022, Spatial and Spatio-temporal EpidemiologyCitation Excerpt :This type of research could be conducted using a geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA), which integrates GPS methods and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) that can capture self-reported behaviors and experiences in real- or near real-time in a naturalistic setting (Kirchner and Shiffman, 2016; Freisthler et al., 2014). GEMA has been increasingly used in other substance use and mental health research (Epstein et al., 2013; Kirchner et al., 2013; Watkins et al., 2013; Kou et al., 2020; Mennis et al., 2016; Duncan et al., 2016). Using a sample of 14 YA marijuana users living in the greater Seattle area, where recreational use of marijuana is legal, this paper demonstrates the use of GEMA methods, including examples of spatio-temporal measures that can be created, towards the investigation of the role of spatio-temporal factors in marijuana use.
Adolescent treatment admissions for marijuana following recreational legalization in Colorado and Washington
2020, Drug and Alcohol DependenceCitation Excerpt :We run an unadjusted difference-in-differences model which includes a set of year dummy variables to account for the secular trend of treatment admissions, a dummy variable indicating Colorado/Washington, and the difference-in-differences variable indicating Colorado/Washington after RML enactment (beginning in 2013). We then run an adjusted model, which includes a set of state-year level covariates, including an index of socioeconomic disadvantage (Mennis et al., 2016, see Supplementary Materials for details), percent white (not Hispanic) population, and SUD treatment center availability (number of treatment centers per 10,000 adolescent population; SAMHSA National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services [N-SSATS] data). To test the sensitivity of our analytical results, we refit the difference-in-differences models using 2014 as the year of legalization (when RML was widely implemented in Colorado/Washington), excluding criminal justice referrals to treatment (to account for the potential effect of legalization on reduced criminal justice referrals to treatment; Chu, 2015), and for Colorado and Washington in separate models.
Fentanyl related overdose in Indianapolis: Estimating trends using multilevel Bayesian models
2018, Addictive Behaviors