Motor vehicle crashes (MVC) are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens and cause the largest proportion of mortality among Latino adolescent males. MVC-related injury disparities persist and are growing among U.S. Latino adolescent males, where current mortality rates exceed those of their non-Latino white peers. For adolescent drivers, substance use is a known risk factor for a serious or fatal MVC. Acculturation in U.S. Latino adolescents has been previously shown to play an important role in substance use propensity (Castro, Stein, & Bentler, 2009), while substance use of any kind is linked to an increase in MVC risk among adolescents (Dunlop & Romer, 2010). Despite the negative effects of poverty, low education, and poor access to healthcare, U.S. Latinos as a group have been noted for having health outcomes similar, and in some cases, better than non-Latino white peers in what is commonly described as the “Latino Epidemiological Paradox” (Morales, Lara, Kington, Valdez, & Escarce, 2002). We sought to assess the effects of acculturation and parent connectedness on behaviors increasing the risk of crash injury in Latino adolescent males. We enrolled a total of 138 Latino adolescent males with an overall mean age of 16.9 years. Males of Puerto Rican descent represented the largest portion of the sample (59.1%) and although the majority of participants were US-born (61.6%), most had at least one parent that was foreign born (84.1%). Few adolescents had a driver’s license or permit (10.1%) and many reported unlicensed driving (55.1%). Increasing acculturation was a good predictor of marijuana use, predicting lifetime use (p< 0.001), age of initiation (p= 0.021), and recent use (p= 0.011). Low parent connectedness had significant associations with reports of having been in a motor vehicle crash (p= 0.014), cigarette smoking (p= 0.003) and having recently started smoking (p< 0.001). Low parent connectedness was also a good predictor of binge drinking behavior, predicting both occasions of having 5+ drinks (p= 0.006) and number of ...
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1943-2461 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -