Project Details
Description
PROJECT SUMMARY
Structural racism (SR) is defined as mutually reinforcing systems, such as income, education and housing, that
disadvantage ethnoracially minoritized individuals. SR is increasingly recognized as a fundamental cause of
ethnoracial inequities in health, however, the impact of neighborhood-level SR on substance use risk in
minoritized youth is not known, despite the widespread negative impact that substance use disorders (SUDs)
have on public health. To address this major gap, we plan to characterize the impact of SR, measured as area-
level racial differences in income, education and exposure to violence, on neurocognitive mechanisms of
substance use risk at the brain and behavior levels in two disadvantaged contexts. A Community Advisory Board
will refine our approach and maximize impact of findings. Results will inform structural interventions, the primary
line of prevention for structural inequities. The buffering effect of area- and family-level protective factors, e.g.
percentage of Latine owned businesses, parental monitoring, and individual-level factors, e.g. neurocognition
could also inform secondary lines of structural-, family- and individual level-prevention. In the US, SR developed
from a long history of deliberate exclusion of ethnoracially minoritized individuals from access to wealth and other
opportunities, e.g. education and safe living environments. Thus, high levels of SR indicate an unjust
environment in which larger rewards are purposefully kept out of reach. We have learned from social psychology
that weaker belief in a just world relates to choosing smaller, sooner over larger, later rewards, aka steeper delay
discounting, as this is the optimal strategy in an unjust world. However, when the reward is a substance and
immediate use is chosen over long-term health outcomes, this environmental adaptation could increase
the risk of substance use. During adolescence, delay discounting predicts future use and in childhood,
neighborhood disadvantage relates to reduced grey matter volume in prefrontal brain regions, possibly indexing
environmental shaping. In adulthood, SUDs are associated with steeper delay discounting and decreased task-
related brain activity in prefrontal regions. We will work with the Boricua Youth Study (BYS), an intergenerational,
representatively sampled cohort of Puerto Rican families living in the South Bronx, New York (SBx) and San
Juan, Puerto Rico (PR) that has been followed for 20+ years. We hypothesize that greater neighborhood SR,
measured as a latent factor indexed by racial differences in income and education, and murder rates, will relate
to alterations in adolescent neural structure and delay discounting related function (R61; n=36 in SBx;
n=36 in PR), weaker belief in a just world, and thus increase substance use risk in minoritized youth (R33;
n=80 in SBx; n=80 in PR). Neighborhood- and family-level protective factors will buffer the impact of SR
on neural outcomes (R33). Results will reflect the impact of SR on neurocognitive mechanisms of substance
use risk in minoritized youth, guiding structural-, family- and individual prevention approaches.
Status | Active |
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Effective start/end date | 9/1/24 → 8/31/25 |
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- Decision Sciences(all)