“Our Doors Are Open to Everybody”: Public Libraries as Common Ground for Public Health

Taylor

SSM - Population Health

2018

Police maltreatment, whether experienced personally or indirectly through one’s family or friends, represents a potentially harmful stressor, particularly for minority populations. We address this issue by investigating: (1) how waist circumference (WC) varies by personal and vicarious exposure to unfair treatment by police (UTBP); and (2) to what extent exposure to UTBP explains the black-white disparity in WC. We employed data collected from a community-based sample of black (n = 601) and white (n = 608) adults living in Nashville-Davidson county Tennessee to address these questions. Results from our final linear regression model showed that those who reported vicarious UTBP had WCs that were approximately 2 in. greater than those who did not (b = 2.03; p = 0.003). While personal UTBP was not linked to higher WC, a post-hoc analysis suggested that our ability to detect an association was complicated by selection. Binary mediation analysis revealed that differential exposure to vicarious UTBP accounted for approximately 12% of the black-white WC disparity among women. We found no black-white differences in WC among men. The association between vicarious UTBP and WC did not vary by age, race, or gender. Overall, our findings point toward the role of discriminatory policing as a potential upstream contributor to racial disparities in health.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weighed down by discriminatory policing: Perceived unfair treatment and black-white disparities in waist circumference

Taylor

SSM - Population Health

2018

“…These studies would advance the field substantially by providing a nuanced spatio-temporal link between environment and risk behavior, also because there may be differences in hypotheticals for engagement in a research study versus real life behaviors in this particular population. This future research on neighborhoods and the health of gay, bisexual and other SMM, is warranted in light of increasing research demonstrating that neighborhoods can influence HIV outcomes in SMM populations [28] as well as other health outcomes/behaviors [29, 30]. The implications for this next-generation work are that they can potentially revolutionize our researchers and practitioners’ views of biomedical prevention, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) interventions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acceptability of smartphone applications for global positioning system (GPS) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) research among sexual minority men

et al. 2019

BackgroundEmerging research is using global positioning system (GPS) and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods among sexual minority men (SMM), a population that experiences multiple health disparities. However, we are not aware of any research that has combined these approaches among SMM, highlighting the need for acceptability and feasibility research. The purpose of this study was to examine the acceptability of implementing GPS and EMA research protocols using smartphone applications among SMM as well as related socio-demographic correlates.MethodsData come from a sample of SMM on a popular geosocial-networking app in Paris, France (n = 580). We assessed the acceptability of implementing GPS and EMA research protocols on smartphone apps as well as socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, sexual orientation, country of origin, employment status, and relationship status). We examined the anticipated acceptability of GPS and EMA data collection methods as well as socio-demographic correlates of acceptability of GPS and EMA methods.ResultsWe found that over half (54.1%) of the sample was willing to download a smartphone app for GPS-based research and we found that almost 60% of the participants were willing to download a smartphone app for EMA-based research. In total, 44.0% reported that they were willing to download both GPS and EMA apps. In addition, we found that older participants were less willing to download a smartphone app for EMA research than younger participants aged 18–24 (40–49 years: aPR = 0.40; 95% CI = 0.20, 0.78) and students were more willing to download smartphone apps for both GPS and EMA research (aPR = 1.41; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.95).ConclusionResults from this study suggest that using smartphone apps to implement GPS and EMA methods among some SMM are acceptable. However, care should be taken as segments of SMM are less likely to be willing to engage in this type of research.

“…Psychologists, similarly, may protest the sparseness of our self-efficacy measures. Self-efficacy phenomena, and related constructs, are multi-step and the subject of scores of studies [ 64 , 65 ]. Our instrument characterizes self-efficacy using four items, thus reducing its complexity to make measurement manageable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of culture in predicting environmental behavior in middle school students on Hawaiʻi Island

2018

Researchers have investigated the factors that influence environmental behavior for decades. Two often-investigated phenomena, connectedness to nature and self-efficacy, often correlate with environmental behavior, yet researchers rarely analyze those correlations along with underlying cultural factors. We suggest that this is a substantial oversight and hypothesize that cultural factors affect environmental behavior, particularly through an interplay with the connectedness to nature and self-efficacy constructs. To test this hypothesis, we surveyed eighth-grade students on the island of Hawaiʻi. The instrument included items to assess connectedness to nature and self-efficacy (both frequently measured in environmental behavior studies) and multiple measures of behavior. Most of the behavior measures are commonly used in studies of environmental behavior, and one was developed in collaboration with local partners to reflect more culturally specific modes of environmental behavior. With those partners, we also developed a construct reflecting the relevance of local culture. We explored the relative influence of the more commonly investigated constructs (connectedness to nature, behavioral variables) along with the newer construct (cultural relevance). We found that, when we took those considerations into account, cultural relevance significantly predicted connectedness to nature, self-efficacy, and a commonly used behavioral measure. Our results thus suggest that many models of environmental behavior may be misspecified when they omit critical culture- and ethnicity-related factors. This may be particularly important in contexts with high cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity or in contexts where mainstream Western environmental approaches are non-dominant. Our results emphasize the importance of addressing ethnicity and culture in environmental thought and action.