Original articleLinks Between Childhood Exposure to Violent Contexts and Risky Adolescent Health Behaviors
Section snippets
Data
The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) is a population-based, birth cohort study of 4,898 children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large American cities (population over 200,000). Because FFCWS oversampled nonmarital births, the study includes a large and diverse sample of children from low-income families and neighborhoods. Sample recruitment is described in Reichman et al. [23]; subsequent data collection procedures are documented at //fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/documentation
Results
Results are reported in Table 2, Table 3 (all coefficients for Table 3 are available in Table A2).
Discussion
This study is the first to demonstrate a prospective link between exposure to violence and risky health behavior across domains. Using a diverse population-based sample, we find that childhood exposure to violent contexts is associated with higher levels of risky health behavior 6-10 years later at age 15. Controlling for child, family, and neighborhood characteristics, community violence (but not family violence) is associated with risky sexual behavior, whereas family violence (but not
Acknowledgments
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01HD36916, R01HD39135, R01HD40421, and P2CHD047879 and a consortium of private foundations. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institutes of Health.
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2022, SSM - Population HealthCitation Excerpt :Violence exposure was measured as frequency of experiencing or witnessing someone being: (1) beaten up; (2) attacked with a weapon; and (3) shot at (Chen & Lee, 2021), or witnessing someone be killed through violence in the community. Parent report of whether they were ever afraid to let the child outside because of violence and fear of gang violence in the neighborhood was included from ages 5 through 15 (James et al., 2018). All community adversity data reflect mother report as items were only asked of primary caregivers except for a single wave.
Social and Relational Health Risks and Common Mental Health Problems Among US Children: The Mitigating Role of Family Resilience and Connection to Promote Positive Socioemotional and School-Related Outcomes
2022, Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North AmericaCitation Excerpt :Positive and adverse social and relational experiences have concrete biologic impacts that shape child development, social and emotional skills, mental health, and overall well-being.5–8 Socially, children must have basic needs met, like food,9,10 safe housing,11 and neighborhoods free from violence12 and racism.13 Relationally, healthy development requires the presence of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships across all contexts where children learn, play, and grow.6,7,14
Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest or sources of financial support to declare.