1. Even worse for Black girls: the longitudinal association of racial bullying with the initiation of alcohol and tobacco use.
- Author
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Menezes, Alessandra A S, Sanchez, Zila M, Demarzo, Marcelo, Rezende, Leandro F M, and Miskolci, Richard
- Subjects
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SUBSTANCE abuse risk factors , *WOMEN of color , *RISK assessment , *POISSON distribution , *RESEARCH funding , *SMOKING , *HUMAN beings , *STATISTICAL sampling , *RANDOMIZED controlled trials , *RACISM , *ODDS ratio , *BULLYING , *ALCOHOL drinking , *CONFIDENCE intervals , *TOBACCO products , *REGRESSION analysis - Abstract
We used Poisson's linear regression to examine the association between racial bullying (RB) and the initiation of alcohol and tobacco uses after 9 months. Two cluster-randomized controlled trials were conducted in 2019 with children in grades five (girls: 50.0%; 10 years old: 82.0%; White: 36.8%; Black: 58.7%; others: 4.5%) and seven (girls: 49.5%; 12 years old: 78.1%; White: 33.2%; Black: 60.4%; others: 6.4%) from 30 public schools in the municipality of São Paulo, Brazil. We restricted our analyses to 2 subsets of students in each grade: those who reported no lifetime alcohol use at baseline and those who reported no lifetime baseline tobacco use. At baseline, 16.2% of fifth and 10.7% of seventh graders reported suffering from RB in the 30 days before data collection. After 9 months, 14.9% of fifth graders started using alcohol and 2.5%, tobacco. Among seventh graders, the figures were 31.2% and 7.7%, respectively. RB predicted the initiation of use of alcohol (risk ratio [RR] = 1.36; 95% CI, 1.07-1.70) and tobacco (RR = 1.81; 95% CI, 1.14-2.76) among seventh graders, with race-gender differences, particularly in Black girls (alcohol: RR = 1.45; 95% CI, 1.07-1.93; tobacco: RR = 2.34; 95% CI, 1.31-3.99). School-based programs and policies must explicitly address issues related to racism and gender in alcohol and tobacco prevention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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