UCLA

Epidemiological research demonstrates a “Latino health paradox”: Despite greater exposure to social stressors and socioeconomic disadvantage, Latinos experience similar or lower rates of several serious health issues (e.g., low infant birth weight, mortality) relative to non-Hispanic Whites. Nevertheless, Latinos fare worse on other indicators of health problems, such as depressive symptoms and self-rated health. To identify the source of these disparities, population health research has focused on the social, health, and stress-related risk factors associated with poor health outcomes among Latinos. While studies have highlighted the various social determinants that shape health outcomes among Latinos, they also underscore the significance of coping as a way to mitigate the negative impact of these risks. As such, coping is critical for chronic disease management, and identifying the ways that Latinos draw on coping resources to deal with the social and health challenges they face may be just as important as identifying risk factors that contribute to poor health. However, several gaps in the coping research among Latinos limit our understanding of how this population manages their health despite adversity. To better promote positive coping and maximize health among Latinos, it is critical to understand the types of personal, social, and behavioral coping tools Latinos use to respond to health and stress-related hardships. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the modifiable factors that improve quality of life among Latinos. I employed latent class analysis (LCA) to identify profiles of personal, social, and behavioral coping resources among Latinos. I then explored the social determinants that shape the development of these profiles. Finally, using multivariate linear regression, I assessed mental and global health outcomes across each coping profile. Applying LCA to coping research captures the complex range of coping and enriches our theoretical understanding of the underpinnings of the latent coping construct. Findings suggest important nuances in psychosocial coping resources among Latinos, such that having greater access to a variety of resources may be most protective for health. For instance, those with fewer personal and social resources tend to have poorer mental health. Moreover, findings underscore the ways that coping and overall well-being are shaped by social conditions (e.g., country of birth, age, social disadvantage). This work bridges disease self-management and stress process research by identifying multidimensional coping profiles and providing a more comprehensive approach in understanding psychosocial and health behavior mechanisms among middle-aged and older Latinos.