UC Berkeley

Latino youth represent a growing population in urban centers across the United States, yet face substantial socioeconomic barriers to future opportunity tied to poverty, immigrant status, and social exclusion. These negative aspects of the social environment contribute to a disproportionate distribution of adolescent childbearing, substance use, and gang involvement among Latino youth. To reverse these trends of health and socioeconomic inequity, public health practitioners must consider innovative research approaches and intervention designs that address upstream and contextual exposures. Such approaches carry the potential to impact a range of individual and community health outcomes. This dissertation will explore avenues to promote Latino adolescent health and a shift from a conventional public health focus on an individual-level and risk-reduction approach to a focus on a contextual-level and asset-promoting approach.

This dissertation is composed of three papers that explore protective social ties, neighborhood norms and structural barriers associated with Latino adolescent health. The data for each paper come from two studies conducted as part of a community-based research program in the Mission District in San Francisco. The first paper is a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews and explores how youth articulate ideal childbearing expectations and the alignment of individual expectations with those that dominate their social environment. Findings from this analysis suggest that while youth aspire to fulfill post-secondary goals prior to starting a family and that these goals are aligned with family and partner childbearing expectations, they face barriers tied to poverty, immigration status, and community violence. Implications for strengths-based sexual health and adolescent pregnancy prevention are discussed. The second paper is a quantitative assessment of baseline data from a feasibility study of a sexual health intervention and examines the presence of positive peer network ties among gang-affiliated youth and how such ties are associated with frequent alcohol and marijuana use. Findings from this analysis suggest that having close friends with college plans has a protective association against frequent substance use. Intervention implications are discussed, including opportunities for leveraging positive peer ties among gang-affiliated youth. The third paper is a community report and is a translational research effort to provide community partners with key findings from the first two papers and an analysis of the intervention outcomes. This paper details next steps to inform programming and local policy that promotes adolescent health. In combination, these three papers underscore that protective factors in the social environment can inform strengths- and community-based interventions to support and enable adolescents to proactively engage in healthy behaviors, pursue future opportunities, and contribute to community well-being.