Black Youth Research Articles

Long-Term PM2.5 Exposure and Upregulation of CLCA1 Expression in Nasal Epithelium from Youth with Asthma.

Little is known about long-term PM2.5 exposure and airway epithelial gene expression. To test for association between long-term PM2.5 exposure and nasal epithelial gene expression in youth with asthma. Transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) of long-term PM2.5 in nasal epithelium from youth aged 6-20 years in the: 1) Epigenetic Variation and Childhood Asthma in Puerto Ricans study (EVA-PR, n=182); 2) Vitamin D Kids Asthma Study (VDKA, n=58); and 3) Stress and Treatment Response in Puerto Rican and African American Children with Asthma study (STAR, n=81). Satellite hybrid models were used to estimate PM2.5 exposure in the prior year at each participant's residence. Multivariable negative binomial regression was used for each TWAS, adjusting for age, sex, and other covariates. A meta-analysis of all TWAS results was then conducted using an inverse variance-weighted average approach. Most participants (~95%) in the meta-analysis of TWAS for PM2.5 exposure identified as Puerto Rican or Black. Long-term PM2.5 was associated with: 1) upregulated expression of CLCA1 (calcium-activated chloride channel regulator 1, false discovery rate-adjusted P [FDR-P]=0.008), SYCP2 (synaptonemal complex protein 2, FDR-P=0.01), and CYP2A6 (cytochrome p450 family 2 subfamily A member 6, FDR-P=0.02), and 2) downregulated expression of EDAR (ectodysplasin A receptor, FDR-P=0.01). In a meta-analysis, CLCA1 upregulation was associated with ≥1 positive allergen-specific IgE (FDR-P <0.001) and increased blood eosinophils (FDR-P <0.001) and total IgE (FDR-P <0.001). In a meta-analysis of TWASs in predominantly Puerto Rican and Black youth with asthma, long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with upregulated airway epithelial CLCA1 expression, in turn linked to biomarkers of T2-high immunity.

Disparities in Psychiatric Emergency Department Boarding of Children and Adolescents

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency department boarding of youth with mental health concerns has increased. To summarize characteristics (including gender, age, race, ethnicity, insurance, diagnosis, and barriers to placement) of youth who boarded in emergency departments while awaiting inpatient psychiatric care and to test for racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in boarding lengths and inpatient admission rates after boarding. Secondarily, to assess whether statewide demand for inpatient psychiatric care correlated with individual outcomes. This cross-sectional analysis included administrative data collected from May 2020 to June 2022 and represented a statewide study of Massachusetts. All youth aged 5 to 17 years who boarded in Massachusetts emergency departments for 3 or more midnights while awaiting inpatient psychiatric care were included. Boarding for 3 or more midnights while awaiting inpatient psychiatric care. Emergency department boarding length (number of midnights) and whether inpatient care was received after boarding. Statistical analyses performed included logistic and gamma regressions; assessed gender, racial, and ethnic disparities; and correlations between statewide demand for psychiatric care and boarding outcomes. A total of 4942 boarding episodes were identified: 2648 (54%) for cisgender females, 1958 (40%) for cisgender males, and 336 (7%) for transgender or nonbinary youth. A total of 1337 youth (27%) were younger than 13 years. Depression was the most common diagnosis (2138 [43%]). A total of 2748 episodes (56%) resulted in inpatient admission, and 171 transgender and nonbinary youth (51%) received inpatient care compared with 1558 cisgender females (59%; adjusted difference: -9.1 percentage points; 95% CI, -14.7 to -3.6 percentage points). Transgender or nonbinary youth boarded for a mean (SD) of 10.4 (8.3) midnights compared with 8.6 (6.9) midnights for cisgender females (adjusted difference: 2.2 midnights; 95% CI, 1.2-3.2 midnights). Fewer Black youth were admitted than White youth (382 [51%] and 1231 [56%], respectively; adjusted difference: -4.3 percentage points; 95% CI, -8.4 to -0.2 percentage points). For every additional 100 youth boarding statewide on the day of assessment, the percentage of youth admitted was 19.4 percentage points lower (95% CI, -23.6% to -15.2%) and boarding times were 3.0 midnights longer (95% CI, 2.4-3.7 midnights). In this cross-sectional study, almost one-half of 3 or more midnight boarding episodes did not result in admission, highlighting a need to understand the effects of boarding without admission. Gender and racial disparities were identified, suggesting the need for targeted resources to reduce boarding and promote equitable access to care.

Why We Need a Long View of Abolition to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Drawing on experiential, literary and historical narratives, this article connects the long history shaping the school-to-prison-pipeline to the contemporary experiences of Black youth in today’s educational system. It maps abolitionism from its origins as a movement to end slavery through the ongoing Black freedom struggles that have challenged state and vigilante violence throughout the eras of Jim Crow and Civil Rights to today’s efforts to dismantle the prison state. By situating the criminalization of African American education from our nation’s founding until the present with particular focus on the post Brown years, the article stresses how policies that funded policing over education persisted through liberal and conservative administrations. This longer and broader historical approach to school discipline should help teachers, school administrators and policy makers devise anti-racist teaching practices that can resist the seemingly unyielding and ever adaptable strictures of white supremacy, most recently evidenced in the attacks on “Critical Race Theory,” “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” initiatives and so-called “wokism.” By listening to how those who have been enslaved and incarcerated regarded education, I join a chorus of voices suggesting how we might structure our pedagogical choices as a fugitive practice that looks for solutions outside the institution and imagines as yet unthought of alternatives to the ways punishment is incorporated into today’s public education.

Learning from Within: Life-Affirming Practices and Third Spaces Created by and for Incarcerated Youth

Grounded in a Black feminist approach (Collins, 2022; Evans-Winters, 2019), in this article, I weave together the personal and professional to share what I have learned as a Black Latina educator, researcher, and abolitionist who for the past twelve years has worked in carceral spaces alongside numerous men, women, youth, and gender expansive people. I bridge what I have learned from theories of the flesh (Madison, 1993; Moraga & Anzaldúa 2021) to what I have learned as a researcher who works with incarcerated youth and use it as a lens to better understand and study youth confinement. Drawing on data from a three-year critical ethnographic study focused on teaching, learning, and identity development in a juvenile detention center, this article explores young people’s experiences living and learning while confined. Using three distinct vignettes, this article touches on the lives of Black and Mexican heritage youth who at the time were detained in a juvenile detention center and the life-affirming practices and spaces they created in response to their dehumanization. Although youth were in a state of unfreedom (Gilmore, 2008), many refused their dehumanization and developed life-affirming strategies and third spaces for themselves and others.

Safe Spaces and Critical Places: Youth Programming and Community Support

In this article we explore the work of two after-school programs in Toronto, Ontario. Our Youth Success (OYS) is a community-based mentoring program dedicated to lowering the push-out rates of students of Spanish and/or Portuguese-speaking descent. In the Youth Speak Program (YSP), community activists use spoken word poetry and rapping as a vehicle for Black students to express their emotional lives. The data we present come from two separate studies which both used ethnographic approaches, focusing on observation and interviews with participants (Hammersley &amp; Atkinson, 2019). Using Critical Race Theory (CRT), we examine interview data on how the pedagogical relationships developed in these spaces promote the wellbeing of Latinx and Black youth beyond academic outcomes. We argue that these spaces provide insight into the transformative possibilities of critical pedagogies for the wellbeing and healing of communities who have long been marginalized from mainstream institutions.

Reimagining Educational Success: Lessons on Support, Wellbeing, and Trust from Community-Grounded Research with Black Families and Gender-Diverse Youth

We present a dialogue between two community-based scholars in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal, who are examining the experiences of low-income Black families and youth, and gender-diverse, homeless youth. We argue that success must be understood differently in light of the systemic discrimination many youth navigate in schools and explore how research may mirror experiences of discrimination and lack of access that youth navigate in schools. The article highlights how relational research approaches may provide lessons for supporting youth and community leadership and posits that we must foster deep practices of trust-building, shared aims for research impact, and trust in youth.

Race differences in the impact of juvenile detention on likelihood of young adult incarceration of males aging out of care

Youth involved in the child welfare system are more likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system, and juvenile justice involvement is linked to increased likelihood of subsequent incarceration. For these reasons, overrepresentation of Black youth in the child welfare system contributes to racial disparities in incarceration rates. It is, therefore, important to study youth transitioning out of foster care to examine how their young adult outcomes differ by race. Employing the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD), this study compared the incarceration experiences of non-Hispanic White and Black males aging out of foster care. Specifically, this study examined the impact of juvenile detention on the likelihood of incarceration ages 19 to 21and factors that mediated this relationship. Notably, 33.5% of White males and 30.7% of Black males in the sample experienced juvenile detention. Findings indicate that juvenile detention disproportionately impacts Black males who age out of foster care compared to their White counterparts. The direct effect of juvenile detention on reported incarceration between age 19–21 for Black males in the sample was OR = 2.31 compared to OR = 1.91 for White males. Reported incarceration between age 17–19 significantly mediated the relationship between juvenile confinement and incarceration age 19–21 for both Black and White males in the sample, although this effect was substantially stronger for Black males. Research and policy implications are discussed.

An elusive search for skills: assessing debates, practices, and experiences in South Africa

ABSTRACT Planning and identifying skills need is mediated by pre-existing social relations and structures of power in the society. The South African state has explored various methods, policies, programmes, and systems to understand the skills needs of the country. The uneven success of these different attempts can be explained by understanding the complexity of undergoing the task of identifying skills priorities due to the contested nature of the notion of skill and varying ideas about what ought to be prioritized through these processes. The article has three focus areas: 1) assesses three sets of critiques of skills planning in South Africa; 2) shows why the process of identifying skills needs has become elusive; and 3) discusses two illustrative case studies that show examples of initiatives that are excluded from the skills planning processes but are crucial in understanding experiences of Black youth in marginalized communities in relation to education and skills.

The Great Migration and Educational Opportunity

This paper studies the impact of the First Great Migration on children. We use the complete-count 1940 census to estimate selection-corrected place effects on education for children of Black migrants. On average, Black children gained 0.8 years of schooling (12 percent) by moving from the South to the North. Many counties that had the strongest positive impacts on children during the 1940s offer relatively poor opportunities for Black youth today. Opportunities for Black children were greater in places with more schooling investment, stronger labor market opportunities for Black adults, more social capital, and less crime. (JEL H75, I26, J13, J15, J24, N32, N92)

Increasing the representation of minoritized youth for inclusive and reproducible brain-behavior associations.

Population neuroscience datasets allow researchers to estimate reliable effect sizes for brain-behavior associations because of their large sample sizes. However, these datasets undergo strict quality control to mitigate sources of noise, such as head motion. This practice often excludes a disproportionate number of minoritized individuals. We employ motion-ordering and motion-ordering+resampling (bagging) to test if these methods preserve functional MRI (fMRI) data in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study ( ). Black and Hispanic youth exhibited excess head motion relative to data collected from White youth, and were discarded disproportionately when using conventional approaches. Both methods retained more than 99% of Black and Hispanic youth. They produced reproducible brain-behavior associations across low-/high-motion racial/ethnic groups based on motion-limited fMRI data. The motion-ordering and bagging methods are two feasible approaches that can enhance sample representation for testing brain-behavior associations and fulfill the promise of consortia datasets to produce generalizable effect sizes across diverse populations.

"Let's talk about it": Black youths' perceptions on the development of a school-based social media campaign.

The increase in social media mental health (MH) campaigns provides an opportunity to improve awareness and attitudes toward MH. However, racial disparities remain in these social media campaigns. Black youth who participated in MH social media campaigns reported lower levels of improvement in stigma and help-seeking than their White peers. We employed a youth participatory action research (YPAR) process to expand on a previous community-wide MH social media campaign (A. Thompson et al., 2021), focusing on a Central Midwest community. We studied Black adolescents' perceptions of MH stigma and help-seeking to determine essential features of a culturally responsive MH social media campaign for Black youth. With a lead youth-research collaborator, the research team designed the following two-staged study. The first stage consisted of four semistructured focus group interviews (FGIs) (N = 20), analyzed by using a rapid analysis strategy to obtain results for the development of the campaign. In the second stage, using YPAR's iterative and action-based process, five youth researchers collaborated with the research team on the campaign's design. Following the two stages, the researcher's thematic analysis resulted in three themes: (a) broadening horizons for campaign designers and MH professionals; (b) considering mistrust of schools and school personnel; and (c) diverse experiences, sustainability, and accessibility in a campaign. Findings indicated that while culturally responsive social media campaigns to promote MH can be designed, mistrust of adults in schools is likely to hinder the impact of such campaigns. Implications for school psychology practice and research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental health stigma and service use among Black American youth: A systematic review.

Past research has found that Black children do not obtain mental health services at a rate commensurate with their needs. Additionally, they overall have lower rates of service utilization in comparison to other groups, even when factors such as socioeconomic status are considered. This systematic review aimed to examine the impact of mental health stigma on service utilization within Black families. We conducted a review of qualitative and quantitative studies published from 1990 to 2020 that examined the relationship between mental health stigma and service use and included disaggregated data of Black American youth and/or caregivers as the participants. Twelve articles (six quantitative, four qualitative, and two mixed methods) met the inclusion criteria. We used a narrative synthesis approach to organize and assess the extracted data. Youth reported stigmatizing beliefs about mental health treatment, although their attitudes did not contribute to caregivers' decisions about seeking treatment for them. Caregivers reported an awareness of stigmatizing views being held by others in their communities, but they did not consistently describe these views as impacting their service use decisions. Findings suggest a need for additional research to determine which factors most strongly impact the service use decisions of Black American caregivers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

An Almost Empty Scoping Review: State of the Research on Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Messaging Strategies for Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ Youth and Young Adults

ABSTRACT Research has yet to offer strong recommendations for effective tobacco prevention and cessation messaging that can reduce tobacco-related health disparities among Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. As a result of predatory marketing strategies and community stressors, among other factors, LGBTQ+ youth and young adults use tobacco products at higher rates than their non-LGBTQ+ peers. These disparities are uniquely complex among Black and/or Latine youth and young adults within the LGBTQ+ community, but there has been little research addressing the communication strategies that can promote tobacco prevention and cessation for these groups. Given the promise and history of successful health communication campaigns for tobacco control, this research is crucial. We thus conducted a scoping review to identify trends and gaps in the empirical research published from 2002–2022 that analyzed tobacco prevention and cessation communication strategies for Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ youth and young adults (ages 12–30) living in the United States. Despite an initial search query of 3,182 articles after deleting duplicates, only five articles were eligible for inclusion, three of which evaluated the This Free Life campaign. Accordingly, we view our scoping review as an almost empty review. Although our results offer preliminary insight into messaging strategies used in these campaigns, our larger contribution is to expose the scarcity of tobacco-related communication research being conducted among Black and/or Latine LGBTQ+ communities. Given the marginalization these communities face, we issue a call to action for researchers and campaign designers and offer a series of suggestions for future research.

An Examination of Ecological Factors Predicting Depressed Mood Among Adolescents

From a developmental perspective, the increase in depressive symptoms among adolescents over the past decade is of great concern due to the risk of long-term mental health problems extending into adulthood. Informed by the Multicultural Social Justice Framework, we examined multi-level, ecological risk and protective factors of depressive symptoms among adolescents. Data were leveraged from the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey ( N = 9,717) to examine adolescent reported depressive symptoms, individual risk-taking, family factors, school engagement and involvement, community disorganization and safety, and district level factors. We stratified by race to examine differential associations between risk and protective factors and depressive symptoms among Asian, Black, and Latinx youth. Results indicate that individual and family risk and family protection were associated with depressive symptoms. School and community factors were directly related and interacted with individual and family factors, particularly among Black and Latinx youth. Findings imply the need to examine both proximal and systemic factors.

Bending stories, disrupting boundaries: spatial reclamation as literacy practices beyond the rows and rules

AbstractIn this article, we explore the dynamic interplay of youth agency, spatial justice, and literacy practices across community spaces through micro‐analysis of photographs and interviews of children and youth. Through a lens of spatial reclamation, the study investigates how children and youth disrupt adult‐designed spaces to restory and reclaim narratives, ultimately reshaping the socio‐spatial landscape. Combining the concepts of restorying and spatial justice, we explore the awareness and agency children exhibit when challenging dominant expectations, particularly examining instances of rulebreaking and safety negotiation. Examining two distinct settings—a school playground and a community protest—the study reveals how youth engage in embodied performances that rupture anticipated discourses in place. The findings underscore the multilayered nature of youth rulebreaking as a form of resistance and as a form of leadership, emphasising the potential for transformative socio‐spatial impact as youth reclaim narratives through new co‐constructions of space. Across age groups and geographies, Black and Brown youth and children emerge as leaders in reshaping spaces through their acts of resistance, redefining boundaries, and leading peaceful protests. The article calls for a nuanced understanding of how spatial justice intersects with restorying, urging educators and researchers to reconsider acts of reclamation as literacies across adult‐dictated spaces.

Improving equity in diabetes technology use: Voices of youth and their parents.

There are marked inequities in clinical outcomes and rates of diabetes technology use among youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D). The quantitative data from our mixed methods cohort study identified significant improvements in glycaemia and quality of life in participants. We aimed to use qualitative methods to provide further insight into our quantitative findings in the setting of underlying health disparities. Fifteen publicly insured, insulin pump-naïve non-Hispanic Black youth aged 6-21 years with T1D and baseline haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥86 mmol/mol (10%) and their parents participated in a mixed methods cohort study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted separately with parents and youth after completion of 6 months of HCL use. Three topic areas were explored: (1) Experience using HCL, (2) barriers to HCL and (3) facilitators to accessing HCL. Semantic content analysis and consensus coding involving two team members were used to generate themes. Thematic saturation was achieved. Youth (Medianage 14.9 years, 67% female) and parents (92% female) were interviewed. Youth and their parents reported that access to HCL provides a new outlook on living with T1D, although managing T1D is still hard. They felt that diabetes technology is most helpful for those struggling with management. Participants experienced barriers to access including misconceptions of HCL systems, clinician bias and systemic racism. They suggested these barriers can be overcome by offering diabetes technology education for all people with T1D, increasing awareness of HCL in the community and providing resources to overcome barriers created by social determinants of health. The voices of historically minoritised youth with suboptimal T1D control and their parents provide important, previously unreported experiences and perspectives on barriers and facilitators to using HCL that will shape interventions to improve equity in access to diabetes technology.

School belonging mediates the longitudinal effects of racial/ethnic identity on academic achievement and emotional well-being among Black and Latinx adolescents

Social Identity Theory proposes that a positive in-group social identification fosters students' academic motivation and psychological well-being. The present study, grounded in Social Identity Theory, investigated the roles of racial/ethnicity identity (REI) in the development of school adjustment among Black and Latinx youth as well as the psychological mechanisms underlying these longitudinal associations. We hypothesized that REI would positively predict the development of academic achievement and emotional symptoms. In addition, we hypothesized that the development of school belonging would mediate the predictive effects of REI on the growth of academic achievement and emotional symptoms. Participants were 475 (n = 182 Black, 48.9% female; 293 Latinx, 47.8% female) students in Grades 7–9. Students self-reported their REI, school belonging, and emotional symptoms. Academic achievement was assessed using standardized achievement test scores. The longitudinal mediation models indicated that REI indirectly predicted the development of academic achievement and emotional symptoms through students' sense of school belonging. Specifically, higher REI embedded achievement and lower REI awareness of racism predicted higher school belonging in Grade 7. Higher Grade 7 school belonging in turn predicted faster academic growth in Grade 7 to Grade 9 as well as lower emotional symptoms in Grade 7. In addition, the three dimensions of REI also directly predicted the growth of academic achievement and emotional symptoms in Grades 7–9. The mediated effects were smaller in size than the direct effects. These findings highlight the importance of fostering positive REI and a strong sense of school belonging in promoting school adjustment among racial/ethnic minoritized, academically at-risk youth.

A Systematic Review and Content Analysis of School Counseling Mental Health Supports for Black Youth: Implications for Research and Practice

A Systematic Review and Content Analysis of School Counseling Mental Health Supports for Black Youth: Implications for Research and Practice

Racial Discrimination and Risk for Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms Among Black Youths

Racial discrimination is a psychosocial stressor associated with youths' risk for psychiatric symptoms. Scarce data exist on the moderating role of amygdalar activation patterns among Black youths in the US. To investigate the association between racial discrimination and risk for psychopathology moderated by neuroaffective processing. This cohort study used longitudinal self-report and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from Black youth participants in the US from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Data were analyzed from January 2023 to May 2024. At time 1 of the current study (12 months after baseline), youths self-reported on their experiences of interpersonal racial discrimination and their feelings of marginalization. Amygdalar response was measured during an emotionally valenced task that included blocks of faces expressing either neutral or negative emotion. At 24 and 36 months after baseline, youths reported their internalizing (anxiety and depressive symptoms) and externalizing symptoms (aggression and rule-breaking symptoms). A total of 1596 youths were a mean (SD) age of 10.92 (0.63) years, and 803 were female (50.3%). Families in the study had a mean annual income range of $25 000 to $34 999. Two factors were derived from factor analysis: interpersonal racial discrimination and feelings of marginalization (FoM). Using structural equation modeling in a linear regression, standardized β coefficients were obtained. Neural response to faces expressing negative emotion within the right amygdala significantly moderated the association between FoM and changes in internalizing symptoms (β = -0.20; 95% CI, -0.32 to -0.07; P < .001). The response to negative facial emotion within the right amygdala significantly moderated the association between FoM and changes in externalizing symptoms (β = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.04 to 0.43; P = .02). Left amygdala response to negative emotion significantly moderated the association between FoM and changes in externalizing symptoms (β = -0.16; 95% CI, -0.32 to -0.01; P = .04). In this cohort study of Black adolescents in the US, findings suggest that amygdala function in response to emotional stimuli can both protect and intensify the affective outcomes of feeling marginalized on risk for psychopathology, informing preventive interventions aimed at reducing the adverse effects of racism on internalizing and externalizing symptoms among Black youths.

Factors That Contribute to the Mental Health of Black Youth during COVID-19 Pandemic.

The mental health of Black youth during the COVID-19 pandemic is potentially influenced by various systemic factors, including racism, socioeconomic disparities, and access to culturally sensitive mental health support. Understanding these influences is essential for developing effective interventions to mitigate mental health disparities. Our project used a community-based participatory (CBP) research design with an intersectional theoretical perspective. An advisory committee consisting of fourteen Black youth supported all aspects of our project. The research team consisted of experienced Black researchers who also trained six Black youths as research assistants and co-researchers. The co-researchers conducted individual interviews, contributed to data analysis, and mobilized knowledge. Participants were recruited through the advisory committee members and networks of Black youth co-researchers and sent an email invitation to Black community organizations. Forty-eight Black identified were interviewed between the ages of 16 and 30 in Canada. The data was analyzed thematically. We kept a reflexive note throughout all aspects of the project. Participants reported significant challenges with online schooling, including a lack of support and access to resources. Lockdowns exacerbated stress, particularly for those living in toxic living/home environments. Financial burdens, such as food insecurity and precarious employment, were prevalent and exacerbated mental health challenges. Additionally, experiences of anti-Black racism and police brutality during the pandemic heightened stress and anxiety among participants. The findings underscore the complex interplay of systemic factors in shaping the mental health of Black youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Addressing these disparities requires targeted interventions that address structural inequities and provide culturally competent support to mitigate the impact on mental well-being.