Structural Racism, Neurocognition in Reward Related Decision Making and Substance Use Risk

  • Sussman, Tamara (PI)
  • Duarte, Cristiane C.S. (CoPI)
  • Canino, Glorisa J. (CoPI)

Project: Research project

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.
StatusActive
Effective start/end date9/1/248/31/25

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Decision Sciences(all)