African American youth face a myriad of challenges to their healthy development in a society that has traditionally devalued them because of their race. Chief among these challenges is the continued exposure to racially discriminatory events. Research findings have consistently indicated that African American youth experience racial discrimination at non-trivial levels. Research has also consistently linked African American youth’s experiences with racial discrimination to a variety of deleterious academic, social, and well-being outcomes. At the same time, there is also evidence that many African American youth are resilient in the face of these racial challenges. African Americans’ racial identity attitudes seem to be a particularly important source of resilience. Racial identity refers to individuals’ attitudes and beliefs regarding the significance and meaning of race in individuals’ lives. The present talk will review some of our latest research findings related to the interplay among racial identity, racial discrimination, and well-being outcomes in African American adolescents and emerging adults.

The aims of the presentation will be 1) to provide an overview of research that assesses the applicability of existing stress and coping frameworks to African American youth from urban, low-income communities, and 2) to propose more culturally- and contextually-relevant coping frameworks for this population.

There continues to be a strong negative association between women’s education and nonmarital fertility, which lead family sociologist, Philip Cohen, to recently conclude that “women with more education are making the more rational decision to avoid childbearing when they're not married.” However, has the time come where the rational decision for college-educated Black women may be to not wait for marriage, because there is a high likelihood that marriage will never come, come too late, or end in divorce too soon? Three issues are examined in this paper: (1) the spread of nonmarital fertility across women’s educational spectrum; (2) college-educated Black women’s self-reported beliefs and ideology about nonmarital fertility; and (3) the self-reported intentionality of nonmarital fertility among Black women of various educational levels.

Tené T. Lewis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Honors Psychology with Distinction from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, her doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed postdoctoral training in Psychosocial Epidemiology at Rush University Medical School in Chicago, IL. Dr. Lewis’ primary area of research is in the area of psychosocial epidemiology, with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women. She has a particular interest in understanding how social and psychological factors contribute to the disproportionately high rates of CVD morbidity and mortality observed in African-American women compared to women of other racial/ethnic groups. Dr. Lewis’ scientific work in this area has received honors from the American Psychosomatic Society and the Health Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association. Her research has been funded by the American Heart Association and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and has been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on National Public Radio (NPR).

ondoms used correctly and consistently, are an effective HIV prevention strategy. The Black heterosexual urban men in my research know this fact too. Yet, unemployment, unemployment compounded by having a criminal record, incarceration, and police stop-and-frisk policies often top their list of priorities, not condom use. Intersectionality is an ideal theoretical framework for understanding the mismatch between traditional psychosocial and public health approaches to HIV prevention and the priorities of many low-income Black heterosexual urban men. Using intersectionality as a foundation, this presentation will define and present core tenets of intersectionality; review relevant literature on discrimination and sexual risk; highlight findings from three of my NIH-funded R01 studies with Black heterosexual men in Philadelphia and Washington, DC relevant to the structural context of sexual risk; and highlight challenges and opportunities for a greater focus on the social-structural context of sexual risk for low-income Black communities in general, and Black heterosexual men in particular.

In the early stages of internet proliferation, a number of scholars argued that it could bring about the realization of an electronic global village, where there would be no race, gender, infirmities or the social ills that accompany these physical indicators of difference. Empirical research on adults, however, has consistently proven this to be a myth and recent studies show racial discrimination is one of the most common among adolescent online experiences. This presentation will discuss the design and preliminary results of the first longitudinal study of online racial discrimination and adjustment among adolescents. Specifically, the impact of racial discrimination in online and offline contexts on mental health, behavioral outcomes and academic performance among African American and Latino adolescents will be examined. Multiple regression analyses of Waves I and II from the Teen Life Online and in Schools Project were used to test these relationships among a sample of 10 to 18 year-olds (N=1020). Findings reveal that Time 1 individual online discrimination was associated with an increased risk for depressive symptoms, anxiety and aggressive behavior at Time 2. Time 1 peer discrimination was also associated with increased aggression and lower GPA at Time 2. Findings underscore the need to add online racial discrimination to offline studies.

Using over 7 years of empirical research, this presentation synthesizes findings from qualitative and quantitative studies addressing psychosocial determinants of African American men’s health. A primary focus of the presentation will be on studies linking masculinity to depressive symptoms. Clinical and policy implications will be discussed, as well as, recommendations for setting a strengths-based social scientific agenda to address African American male health disparities.

Rates of mental health treatment use Black youth and their families are quite low compared to other ethnic groups. Insurance coverage, alone, does not explain these differences. That is, the variance explained by non-financial factors is far greater than financial factors. The consequences of untreated and ineffectively treated mental health disorders among Black youth are also likely to be significant. The chronicity and burden of many mental health disorders are greater for Black youth, for example, than for other ethnic groups. Dr. Michael Lindsey’s talk will examine factors that influence mental health treatment use for Black youth, and reflect upon the evidence for strategies that best engage Black youth and their families in school- and community-based treatment.

Economic and social rights assure that all citizens are able to meet their basic needs and these rights are conceived as universal and egalitarian. However, currently and historically, there exists an inequitable and unfair division of burdens and rewards based on social group membership. Major barriers that contribute to racial disparities within our society include prejudice and discrimination. In this talk, I will focus on factors that give rise to race-based disparities in the legal system, highlighting both neuroscience and psychology. I will close with a discussion of promising intervention techniques that diminish race bias and how they may be applied to legal and economic contexts.

Health disparities researchers have become interested in elucidating the mechanisms by which racism might influence health. One possibility is that psychological and behavioral responses to racism can lead to structural and functional changes in physiological systems (e.g., neuroendocrine, autonomic, and immune systems; Williams & Mohammed, 2009). Individual and situational factors also have been implicated in the racism-heath link. This presentation will highlight the use of cardiovascular psychophysiological methods as a tool for explaining individual differences in African Americans' responses to racism. Recent studies in our laboratory focus on the interaction between racial and ethnic protective factors such as racial identity, racial socialization and Africentric worldview and situational characteristics such as the blatant versus subtle nature of racism events, as potential determinants of health outcomes in African African American young adults. We will discuss the implications of study findings for unpacking the racism-health link and for intervention efforts to address the potentially damaging health effects of racism.