Designing for Multilevel Behavior Change: A Father-Focused Nutrition and Physical Activity Program for Mexican-Heritage Families in South Texas Border Communities.
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SUBMITTER: Johnson CM
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8508574 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:ObjectiveResearch has repeatedly demonstrated that parent foreign nativity has a protective effect on child asthma outcomes among Mexican Americans, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. The current study explored parent depression as a mediator and social support as a moderator of the parent nativity-child asthma control pathway.MethodsData come from the baseline sample of a trial (NCT02481986) testing community interventions for 223 children aged 5 to 16 with uncontrolled asthma. We focused on parent/child dyads of Mexican heritage (N = 165; mean age = 9.08, standard deviation = 2.94; 57.3% with Mexico-born parent). Asthma control was defined using the child and adult versions of the Asthma Control Test (ACT). Psychosocial factors included parent depression symptoms and social (instrumental, informational, and emotional) support.ResultsMexican-born parents had fewer depressive symptoms (β^ = -2.03, SE^ = 0.24) and children with better asthma control (β^ = 1.78, SE^ = 0.24) than US-born parents, P < .0001. Analyses suggested partial mediation of the nativity-ACT path via parent depression (P < .001). An interaction between Instrumental Support and Nativity was marginally significant (β^ = -0.10, SE^ = 0.05, P = .07), with protective effects only observed at higher support levels. Last, among Mexico-born parents, the protective nativity effects on ACT declined with increasing residential years in the United States through 12 years.ConclusionsThis study is novel in identifying parent depression as one mechanism underlying the effects of parent nativity on child asthma control, but results suggest that the health advantages may depend on availability of support. Providing resources for parent depression and instrumental support (transportation, childcare) can optimize asthma interventions in this population.
| S-EPMC7483789 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In light of calls for improving people's skill in collaboration, this paper examines strengths in processes of collaboration of Mexican immigrant children. Sibling pairs (6-10 years old) in California were asked to collaborate in planning the shortest route through a model grocery store. On average, 14 sibling pairs with Mexican Indigenous-heritage backgrounds engaged together collaboratively as an ensemble, making decisions in common and fluidly building on each other's ideas, more often than 16 middle-class European American sibling pairs, who on average more often divided decision making into a solo activity (often ignoring the other or simply bossing the other). Siblings who spent more time collaborating fluidly as an ensemble in the shared planning task were also more likely to collaborate with initiative at home, according to their mothers, which suggests that family socialization practices may contribute to cultural differences in collaboration.
| S-EPMC6233073 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Though a number of language socialization processes are theorized to promote children's heritage language proficiency (HLP), little research has considered these processes in a single study and examined their prospective relations to multiple domains of HLP in school-age children. In a two-wave longitudinal study of Chinese American children of immigrant parents (N = 258, age = 7-11 years), language socialization processes (e.g., adult HL use at home, parental attitudes towards HL, child participation in HL classes or extracurricular activities) were assessed using parent reports and behavioral observation at Time 1 (1st to 2nd grade). Children's HLP (Cantonese or Mandarin) was assessed using vocabulary and literacy tests at Time 2. Results of structural equation modeling showed that adults' Chinese language use with children at home predicted children's higher Chinese receptive and expressive vocabulary two years later, and children's participation in Chinese language extra-curricular activities predicted their higher Chinese receptive and expressive vocabulary and higher Chinese word reading. By contrast, parental valuing of Chinese language and children's exposure to Chinese media did not predict children's Chinese proficiency. These findings provided support for the benefits of HL use at home and HL classes in promoting HL development in children in immigrant families.
| S-EPMC7597852 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans stand out among animals in that we cooperate in large groups to exploit natural resources, and accumulate resource exploitation techniques across generations via cultural learning. This uniquely human form of adaptability is in large part to blame for the global sustainability crisis. This paper builds on cultural evolutionary theory to conceptualize and study environmental resource use and overexploitation. Human social learning and cooperation, particularly regarding social dilemmas, result in both sustainability crises and solutions. Examples include the collapse of global fisheries, and multilateral agreements to halt ozone depletion. We propose an explicitly evolutionary approach to study how crises and solutions may emerge, persist, or disappear. We first present a brief primer on cultural evolution to define group-level cultural adaptations for resource use. This includes criteria for identifying where group-level cultural adaptations may exist, and if a cultural evolutionary approach can be implemented in studying a given system. We then outline a step-by-step process for designing a study of group-level cultural adaptation, including the major methodological considerations that researchers should address in study design, such as tradeoffs between validity and control, issues of time scale, and the value of both qualitative and quantitative data and analysis. We discuss how to evaluate multiple types of evidence synthetically, including historical accounts, new and existing data sets, case studies, and simulations. The electronic supplement provides a tutorial and simple computer code in the R environment to lead users from theory to data to an illustration of an empirical test for group-level adaptations in sustainability research.
| S-EPMC6086275 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundObesity and overweight have increased dramatically in the United States over the last decades. The complexity of interrelated causal factors that result in obesity needs to be addressed within the cultural dynamic of sub-populations. In this study, we sought to estimate the effects of a multifaceted, community-based intervention on body mass index (BMI) among Mexican-heritage children.MethodsNiños Sanos, Familia Sana (Healthy Children, Healthy Family) was a quasi-experimental intervention study designed to reduce the rate of BMI growth among Mexican-heritage children in California's Central Valley. Two rural communities were matched based on demographic and environmental characteristics and were assigned as the intervention or comparison community. The three-year intervention included parent workshops on nutrition and physical activity; school-based nutrition lessons and enhanced physical education program for children; and a monthly voucher for fruits and vegetables. Eligible children were between 3 and 8 years old at baseline. Intent-to-treat analyses were estimated using linear mixed-effect models with random intercepts. We ran a series of models for each gender where predictors were fixed except interactions between age groups and obesity status at baseline with intervention to determine the magnitude of impact on BMI.ResultsAt baseline, mean (SD) BMI z-score (zBMI) was 0.97 (0.98) in the intervention group (n = 387) and 0.98 (1.02) in the comparison group (n = 313) (NS). The intervention was significantly associated with log-transformed BMI (β = 0.04 (0.02), P = 0.03) and zBMI (β = 0.25 (0.12), P = 0.04) among boys and log-transformed BMI among obese girls (β = - 0.04 (0.02), P = 0.04). The intervention was significantly and inversely associated with BMI in obese boys and girls across all age groups and normal weight boys in the oldest group (over 6 years) relative to their counterparts in the comparison community.ConclusionsA community-based, multifaceted intervention was effective at slowing the rate of BMI growth among Mexican-heritage children. Our findings suggest that practitioners should consider strategies that address gender disparities and work with a variety of stakeholders to target childhood obesity.Trial registrationclinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01900613 . Registered 16th July 2013.
| S-EPMC6521467 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study examined patterns of father involvement and their relations with social, behavioral, and cognitive development among low-income children < 5 years. Latent class analysis on data from 2650 fathers (Mage = 29.35 years) in the Supporting Healthy Marriages program revealed four father involvement patterns: (1) High positive involvement (48%); (2) engaged but harsh discipline (42%); (3) low cognitive stimulation (8%); and (4) lower involvement (2%). The low cognitive stimulation pattern was associated with greater father- and mother-reported child behavior problems and lower child socioemotional and cognitive functioning. The engaged but harsh discipline pattern was associated with more father-reported child behavior problems. These findings highlight the need for active engagement of fathers in parenting interventions to promote child development.
| S-EPMC8699948 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDespite well-established negative health consequences of smokeless tobacco use (STU), the number and variety of alternative non-combustible tobacco products on the market have increased tremendously over the last 10 years, as has the market share of these products relative to cigarettes. While STU among non-Hispanic white youth has decreased over the last 10 years, the prevalence has remained constant among Hispanic youth. Here we examine demographic, psychosocial, and genetic risk associated with STU among Mexican heritage youth.MethodsParticipants (50.5 % girls) reported on psychosocial risk factors in 2008-09 (n = 1,087, mean age = 14.3 years), and smokeless tobacco use in 2010-11 (mean age = 16.7 years). Participants provided a saliva sample that was genotyped for genes in the dopamine, serotonin and opioid pathways.ResultsOverall 62 (5.7 %) participants reported lifetime STU. We identified five single nucleotide polymorphisms that increased the risk for lifetime use. Specifically, rs2023902 on SERGEF (OR = 1.93; 95 % CI: 1.05-3.53), rs16941667 on ALDH2 (OR = 3.14; 95 % CI: 1.65-5.94), and rs17721739 on TPH1 (OR = 1.71; 95 % CI: 1.00-2.91) in the dopamine pathway, rs514912 on TRH-DE (OR = 1.84; 95 % CI: 1.25-2.71) in the serotonin pathway, and rs42451417 on the serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4 (OR = 3.53; 95 % CI: 1.56-7.97). After controlling for genetic risk, being male (OR = 1.86; 95 % CI: 1.02-3.41), obesity status (OR = 2.22; 95 % CI: 1.21-4.09), and both higher levels of anxiety (OR = 1.04; 95 % CI: 1.01-1.08) and social disinhibition (OR = 1.26; 95 % CI: 1.07-1.48) were associated with increased use. High subjective social status (OR = 0.78; 95 % CI: 0.64-0.93) was protective against use, while higher parental education (OR = 2.01; 95 % CI: 1.03-3.93) was associated with increased use.ConclusionsThese data suggest that use of genetic risk, along with psychosocial, demographic, and behavioral risk factors may increase our ability to identify youth at increased risk for STU, which in turn may improve our ability to effectively target prevention messages to Mexican heritage youth.
| S-EPMC4636823 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The role of fathers in (co-)parenting their children among refugee and disadvantaged families in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains poorly understood. This study sought to examine the associations among mothers' perceptions of their husband's involvement (hereafter referred to as paternal involvement), and her perceptions of her own well-being and a number of other variables, as well as observed mother-child interactions in families living in refugee and disadvantaged communities in Beirut, Lebanon. We analyzed baseline data from 104 mother-child dyads (mean age of children = 4.34 years; range = 2.05 to 7.93 years of age) who participated in a randomized controlled trial aimed at evaluating the impact of the Mother-Child Education Program in Beirut. In addition to the mother's perception of paternal involvement and the videotaped mother-child interactions, data were collected concerning the mother's well-being and her level of social support, as well as her level of stress as a parent and the way her children were disciplined in the family. Mother-child pairs were videotaped while completing a puzzle together and dyadic interactions were coded. Path analysis showed that paternal involvement was significantly associated with a higher level of maternal well-being and lower distress levels. In addition, higher levels of maternal distress were associated with higher levels of harsh discipline and parenting stress. Correlation analysis showed that higher perceptions of paternal involvement were associated with more positive affect displayed by the child, more positive regard for the child, and better mother-child synchrony during the dyadic interactions. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and the modest sample size, which hinder causal inferences and generalizability of the findings. These preliminary findings suggest that higher levels of paternal involvement may have an impact on markers of maternal mental health and positive mother-child interactions in families living in disadvantaged communities or humanitarian settings. Paternal involvement should be considered when designing and implementing parenting programs in LMICs.
| S-EPMC7058288 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Logic models of signaling pathways are a promising way of building effective in silico functional models of a cell, in particular of signaling pathways. The automated learning of Boolean logic models describing signaling pathways can be achieved by training to phosphoproteomics data, which is particularly useful if it is measured upon different combinations of perturbations in a high-throughput fashion. However, in practice, the number and type of allowed perturbations are not exhaustive. Moreover, experimental data are unavoidably subjected to noise. As a result, the learning process results in a family of feasible logical networks rather than in a single model. This family is composed of logic models implementing different internal wirings for the system and therefore the predictions of experiments from this family may present a significant level of variability, and hence uncertainty. In this paper, we introduce a method based on Answer Set Programming to propose an optimal experimental design that aims to narrow down the variability (in terms of input-output behaviors) within families of logical models learned from experimental data. We study how the fitness with respect to the data can be improved after an optimal selection of signaling perturbations and how we learn optimal logic models with minimal number of experiments. The methods are applied on signaling pathways in human liver cells and phosphoproteomics experimental data. Using 25% of the experiments, we obtained logical models with fitness scores (mean square error) 15% close to the ones obtained using all experiments, illustrating the impact that our approach can have on the design of experiments for efficient model calibration.
| S-EPMC4560026 | biostudies-literature
Project description:There is growing evidence that an adolescent's decision to try cigarettes is influenced by level of exposure to movies in which smoking is portrayed. Less is known about how ethnicity affects this process. We examined whether acculturation and/or country of birth influence the relationship between exposure to smoking imagery in the movies and experimenting with cigarettes among Mexican origin youth. We prospectively followed 1,328 Mexican origin adolescents ages 11 to 13 years at baseline. We assessed which of 50 movies (randomly selected from a pool of 250 popular contemporary movies released from 1999 to 2004 and content analyzed for smoking) adolescents had seen. Smoking behavior was assessed at baseline and at 6-month intervals over 24 months. Ten percent of the adolescents had experimented at baseline; 17% tried subsequently. Multivariate analyses revealed, as exposure to smoking imagery in the movies increased, the chances of having ever experimented [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.27; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.10-1.48] and of being a new experimenter (AOR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.01-1.40) increased, equivalent to a 4.2% increased risk of ever and a 3.0% increased risk of new experimenting for each additional quartile of movie exposure. This effect was moderated by country of birth. For Mexican-born youth, exposure to smoking imagery in the movies was the strongest independent predictor of new experimentation (AOR = 1.52; 95% CI, 1.14-2.05). For U.S.-born youth, we observed a ceiling effect: the percent of experimenters increased with increasing exposure, and then flattened. Among Mexican-born youth, exposure to smoking imagery in the movies may be an important part of the acculturation process associated with smoking initiation.
| S-EPMC2791895 | biostudies-literature