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In this article we address some of the controversies that have arisen in the reception of Richard Alba's work on changing patterns of ethnoracial diversity and the integration of immigrants. We parse some of the debates around the term 'assimilation', arguing that it is still a useful term for understanding the trajectories of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that Alba's demographic analyses of the incorporation of post 1965 immigrants is an objective description of statistical changes in the population, but it is sometimes critiqued by scholars who point to subjective experiences of discrimination and prejudice among this population. We argue that this is best explained by the 'integration paradox' – greater integration leads to more, not less, feelings of exclusion, especially at the beginning of the process. We explore what Alba means when he discusses the expansion of the white racial category, and we review research on whiteness to bring attention to the question of whether the expansion of the mainstream and the blurring of the boundaries of whiteness are related. We stress the importance of differentiating between whiteness as a category, an identity, and an ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative coding procedures emanating from grounded theory were limited by technologies of the 1960s: colored pens, scissors, and index cards. Today, electronic documents can be flexibly stored, retrieved, and cross-referenced using qualitative data analysis (QDA) software. We argue the oft-cited grounded theory framework poorly fits many features of contemporary sociological interview studies, including large samples, coding by teams, and mixed-method analysis. The grounded theory approach also hampers transparency and does not facilitate reanalysis or secondary analysis of interview data. We begin by summarizing grounded theory's assumptions about coding and analysis. We then analyze published articles from American Sociological Association flagship journals, demonstrating that current conventions for semistructured interview studies depart from the grounded theory framework. Based on experience analyzing interview data, we suggest steps in data organization and analysis to better utilize QDA technology. Our goal is to support rigorous, transparent, and flexible analysis of in-depth interview data. We end by discussing strengths and limitations of our twenty-first-century approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we review what is known about the role of race and legal status in the incorporation of immigrants in twenty-first-century America. While race and ethnicity matter in the social mobility of immigrants, racialization is not the impassable stumbling block critical race theory predicts. The research paints a remarkably consistent picture of intergenerational socioeconomic progress, one that is very similar to what happened with immigrants from Europe a century ago. This mobility is accelerated for Asians and Blacks, but slower among Latinxs. Legal status is increasingly a block to integration and affects both undocumented immigrants and their citizen children. While race and legal status intersect, we conclude that legal status is now playing a relatively autonomous role in limiting the life chances of many immigrants. We raise the alarm about not only the direct effects of legal status, but its increasing role in racializing and excluding Latinx Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nathan Glazer was an intellectual and loved debating ideas and thinking about social issues. While he had retired before I joined the Harvard faculty in 1986, I got to know him over the years because he stayed very active well into his nineties. I often disagreed with him, but I very much liked him as a person. He was kind and had a good sense of humor. He would often meet with undergraduate and graduate students and wouldagree to be part of debates about issues like affirmative action.

This article presents an overview of the findings to date of the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project, a longitudinal study of 1,019 young, predominantly female and African American community college students who were surveyed a year before Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and then two to three times afterward. This study combines a multidisciplinary, multimethod approach to understanding the immediate and long-term effects of the Katrina disaster on physical and mental health, economic and social functioning, and neighborhood attainment. I discuss what we can learn from the rare inclusion of predisaster data and our unusual ability to follow participants for years after the disaster. I argue that it is important to follow the recovery of individuals and communities as well as the recovery of the city, as these are often not the same, especially in Katrina where a large proportion of the city never returned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tale "The Lexicon of Old" by Mary C. Waters is presented.

We examine how recent immigration to the United States has affected African Americans. We first review the research on the growing diversity within the black population, driven largely by the presence of black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa. As their children and grandchildren come of age, relations between immigrants and African Americans are complicated by the fact that a growing portion of the African American community has origins in both groups. We then review literature on both new destinations and established gateway cities to illustrate the patterns of cooperation, competition, and avoidance between immigrants of diverse races and African Americans in neighborhoods, the labor market, and politics. We explore the implications of the population's increasing racial diversity owing to immigration for policies that aim to promote racial equality but that are framed in terms of diversity. We conclude with suggestions for new areas of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two important trends may influence the identities of the later-generation descendants of European immigrants in the USA: high levels of ongoing immigration to the USA from all over the world, and the growth of genetic testing for ancestry and ethnic origins. I suggest that these trends may modify Gans's predictions of what will happen to later-generation ethnicity. Both trends might lead to the maintenance of some type of identity, even if it is very thin, or even unrelated to the European immigrants who originally came to the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using New York City as an example, this essay examines how American cities that have a long and continuous history of absorbing immigrants develop welcoming institutions and policies for current immigrants and their children. Cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, and New York have been gateway cities for many previous waves of immigrants and continue to absorb new immigrants today. The ethnic conflicts and accommodations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to shape the context of reception of today's immigrants. In contrast to "new destinations, " which in recent years have often been centers of anti-immigrant sentiment and nativist local social policies, New York has generally adopted policies designed to include and accommodate new immigrants, as well as repurposing institutions that served earlier European immigrants and native-born African Americans and Puerto Ricans. The continuing significance of race in the city is counterbalanced in the lives of immigrants by a relative lack of nativism and an openness to incorporating immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the results of a study of discrimination in the U.S., which surveyed thousands of young adults in the New York City area who were children of immigrants. The subjects were interviewed regarding their personal experiences with discrimination. Eight different ethnic groups were studied, including Chinese Americans, Russian Jewish Americans, African Americans and white Americans. The results indicated that some members of every group had experienced what they perceived as discrimination based on their ethnic identity, but the rates for those with darker skin were significantly higher. Various types of discrimination are analyzed, involving settings such as school, work, shopping, and interactions with the police.

The article presents a response by the author to the essay "A Critique of Symbolic Ethnicity: The ideology of Choice?" by Yiorgos Anagnostou, discussing symbolic ethnic identity in U.S. society in the late 20th-century. Comments are given highlighting the citations and criticism used against her book "Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America." The author notes the ideological disagreements between her and Anagnostou, defends the methodology used within her text, and reasserts the conclusions she initially presented.

This review examines research on the assimilation of immigrant groups. We review research on four primary benchmarks of assimilation: socioeconomic status, spatial concentration, language assimilation, and intermarriage. The existing literature shows that today's immigrants are largely assimilating into American society along each of these dimensions. This review also considers directions for future research on the assimilation of immigrant groups in new southern and midwestern gateways and how sociologists measure immigrant assimilation. We document the changing geography of immigrant settlement and review the emerging body of research in this area. We argue that examining immigrant assimilation in these new immigrant gateways is crucial for the development of theories about immigrant assimilation. We also argue that we are likely to see a protracted period of immigrant replenishment that may change the nature of assimilation. Studying this change requires sociologists to use both birth cohort and generation as temporal markers of assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on sociology and the study of immigration in the United States. Relationship between immigration and the study of race; Problem of being interdisciplinary when there exists a hierarchy of disciplines; Problem of managing a career within a discipline.

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation -- a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents' national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the pattern of reporting of ethnic ancestry in the U.S. by Whites through the 1980 census. The ethnic question introduced in the 1980 decennial census of the U.S. has generated surprising results. There is simplification, inconsistency, and instability in the ethnic origins reported. Simplification often occurs, for example, when we compare the origins of parents with the origins they. report for their children. Moreover, it is not uncommon for the ethnicity reported for one child in a family to be inconsistent with what is said about a sibling. Likewise, there is evidence of instability within a life span, particularly at the time of marriage and when leaving home. It is tempting to interpret these responses as merely reflecting enumeration errors; the new question that generates these results is not entirely clear in its verbal construction, its instructions to respondents, and its goals. This article has three main goals. First, after reviewing both the question and the surprising results reported thus far, we evaluate the competing interpretations for the inconsistent results obtained from the 1980 ethnic origins question.

This article examines the process of ethnic identity formation among two different groups of recent immigrants to the United States: secular kibbutz-born Israelis and middle-class Haitians, While the two groups are different in a number of ways, they share an ambivalence with the identities that American society would assign to them -- as Jews and blacks respectively. By contrasting these two case studies we identify the role of the 'proximal host', the category to which the immigrants would be assigned following immigration. The determination of the ultimate definition of the ethnic identities of these immigrants is a result of the interaction of the conception of identity the immigrants bring with them from their countries of origin, the definitions and reactions of the proximal host group, and the overall ordering and definitions of American society. The ambivalence of both groups of immigrants towards their post-immigration identities is a result of both macro-forces determining the definition of categories and micro-forces of individual choice. In conclusion we show that because of the primacy of race in American society, Israelis are likely to face many more options in the determination of their identities, than are Haitians, although they both face a similar structural dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes recent literature assessing the impact of three factors including economic restructuring, racial discrimination, and immigration on the current patterns of racial inequality in the U.S. Because of the enormous impact of immigration on the composition of America's nonwhite populations, researchers stress the importance of combining analyses of the economy and of racial and ethnic discrimination. The research literature on ethnic inequality shows that progress in narrowing the gap between minorities and whites and among white ethnics was made when the economy was expanding through the mid-1970s. After that, for many groups, the progress slowed, stopped, or reversed. The restructuring of the American economy in the last few decades has hit many unskilled minority workers hard. In addition, the evidence indicates that direct discrimination is still an important factor for all minority subgroups except very highly educated Asians. The large numbers of immigrants entering the U.S. in recent decades have had mixed success, but there are some intriguing ways in which immigrants seem to have achieved mobility in spite of hard economic times and nonwhite status.

The distinctive regional and urban locational patterns of thirty-three ethnic groups in the United States are analyzed from two different perspectives. First, who are the numerically important groups in each region? Second, from the perspective of the groups themselves, where are they spatially concentrated? We hypothesize that the forces generating distinctive ethnic locational patterns are strongest at the time of the initial settlement; thus the longer a group has been present in the United States, the less geographically concentrated it will be. This is found to be true for most ethnic groups except blacks and American Indians, whose specific social and political situations explain their particular concentrations. However, the early settlement patterns still affect the ethnic makeup of various areas of the nation, even though the concentrations have diminished over time. Moreover, although the 1975-1980 patterns of internal migration (analyzed through a Markov Chain model) are tending to reduce some of the distinctive geographic concentrations in the nation, this will still not fully eliminate distinctive ethnic concentrations. Groups differ in their propensities to leave or enter each area in a way that reflects the existing ethnic compositions of the areas. Thus even with the massive level of internal migration in the nation, there is no evidence that the substantial ethnic linkage to region is disappearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of lineage in identity formation among Black Americans. If all of those defined racially as black in the United States have only one ancestry that is a meaningful part of their identity and that ancestry is African-American then for all intents and purposes race and ancestry are equivalent in terms of defining this population. The idea that race and ancestry are equivalent for blacks in the U.S. is made possible because the ancestral diversity among blacks has been consistently ignored in the United States in favor of a racial definition of the population, which defines individuals only in terms of their racial identities. The "one drop rule" of racial classification in the United States has operated historically to make the distinction between race and ethnicity for those defined as blacks unimportant. Thus the people defined as blacks for the most part have also been defined as only having African-American ancestries, regardless of the degree of variation in the ancestries of the individuals involved.

This paper examines the influence of surname on how descendants of white European immigrants to the United States, who are of mixed ethnic ancestry, determine their ethnic identification. It is based on 60 in-depth interviews about ethnic identity and family history, conducted with Catholic, suburban later-generation residents of Santa Clara County California and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (suburbs of San Jose and Philadelphia, respectively). These respondents describe how other people identilS' them using their surname as an indicator of ethnic background as well as how they use surnames to identify others. They continue to use surnames for their own and others' ethnic identifications despite the fact that they are also continually made aware of the ways in which surname is a faulty, and often inaccurate, indicator of ethnic origin. Factors such as intermarriage, name changes and insufficient knowledge of types of surnames undermine the predictive value of surnames for determining ethnic origin. This examination of the day-to-day use of surnames to determine ethnic ancestry shows the discrepancy between the widespread belief that ethnicity is the naming of a fixed, personal, biological trait that is inherited from one's ancestors and the day-to-day evidence that ethnicity is a processual social phenomenon involving change, choice, and movement across ethnic boundaries for the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reviews recent demographic trends in immigration and intermarriage that contribute to the complexity of measuring race and ethnicity. The census question on ancestry is proposed as a possible model for what we might expect with the race question in the 2000 census and beyond. Through the use of ancestry data, changes in ethnic identification by individuals over the course of their lives, by generation, and according to census question directions are documented. It is pointed out that the once-rigid lines that divided European-origin groups from one another have increasingly blurred. All of these changes are posited as becoming more likely for groups we now define as "racial." While it is acknowledged that race and ethnicity will become increasingly difficult to measure as multiple racial identities become more common and more likely to be reported, it is argued that monitoring discrimination is crucial for the continued collection of such data. (Am J Public Health. 2000; 90:1735-1737) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to disasters is associated with a range of posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) trajectories. However, few studies have tracked PTSS for more than a decade postdisaster, and none to our knowledge has explored the role of predisaster resources and vulnerabilities in shaping the likelihood of trajectory membership. The current study included participants from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina Study (N = 885). Participants were originally part of a community college intervention study and were assessed prior to the hurricane (6–21 months predisaster), and approximately 1 year, 4 years, and 12 years postdisaster. Latent class growth analysis identified PTSS trajectories. Perceived social support, probable mental illness, and physical health conditions or problems–all assessed predisaster–were examined as predictors of trajectory membership at the univariate level and in multivariable models without and with adjustment for disaster exposure. Three PTSS trajectories were detected: Moderate-Decreasing (69.3%), High-Decreasing (23.1%), and High-Stable (7.6%). In the multivariable predictive model without adjustment for disaster exposure, probable predisaster mental illness was significantly associated with greater odds of the High-Decreasing and High-Stable trajectories, and physical health conditions or problems with greater odds of the High-Decreasing trajectory, relative to the Moderate-Decreasing trajectory. However, when disaster exposure was adjusted, only the association between predisaster mental illness and the odds of the High-Stable trajectory remained statistically significant. Lower predisaster perceived social support was significantly associated with membership in the High-Decreasing trajectory, relative to the Moderate-Decreasing, at the univariate level, but not in either multivariable model. Whereas predisaster mental illness confers risk for chronic postdisaster PTSS, other impacts of predisaster resources and vulnerabilities on elevated PTSS trajectories do not go beyond those of disaster exposure. The results support disaster preparedness efforts targeting those with mental and physical health conditions, and postdisaster mental health services addressing preexisting vulnerabilities in addition to disaster-related PTSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review findings from the last decade of research on the effects of disasters, concentrating on three important themes: the differences between the recovery of places versus people, the need to differentiate between short- and long-term recovery trajectories, and the changing role of government and how it has exacerbated inequality in recovery and engendered feedback loops that create greater vulnerability. We reflect the focus of the majority of sociological studies on disasters by concentrating our review on studies in the United States, but we also include studies on disasters throughout the world if they contribute to our empirical and theoretical understanding of disasters and their impacts. We end with a discussion of the inevitability of more severe disasters as climate change progresses and call on social scientists to develop new concepts and to use new methods to study these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to reduce stark health inequalities by providing universal health insurance to all Americans and long-term authorised immigrants. Later regulations, however, gave the 50 U.S. states latitude to choose the degree of coverage for their constituencies. In this paper, we explore how interactions with these diverse systems of care contribute to the incorporation of immigrants into America, especially among the most likely to remain uninsured: the working poor. We uncovered a process in which immigrants’ access to health coverage and care was informed by the procedural justice embedded in their interactions with representatives of the health care system. These interactions signalled to immigrants their deservingness in American society, operating as a system of incorporation in the most inclusive states and as a barrier to incorporation in the most exclusive ones. Repealing the ACA may exacerbate differences across states in access to health care among eligible immigrants and end the incipient transformation of the U.S. health care system into an agent of immigrant incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As undocumented Latino immigrants transition into adulthood, they also transition into illegality. They move from a somewhat protected status under which they had access to education and other social benefits, to the more vulnerable category of undocumented adults without access to social rights. How undocumented immigrants’ interactions with social services contribute to the formation of their ethnic identity and feelings of belonging to the United States is the focus of this research. Drawing on qualitative interview data from undocumented adults who grew up in the United States, this article shows that as undocumented children transition into adulthood, they face a new system that forces them to learn how to become an immigrant if they want to remain part of American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing was a randomized experiment that moved very low-income US families from high-poverty neighborhoods to low-poverty neighborhoods starting in the early 1990s. We modeled report of a child's baseline health problem as a predictor of neighborhood outcomes for households randomly assigned to move from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods. We explored associations between baseline health problems and odds of moving with the program upon randomization (1994-1997), neighborhood poverty rate at follow-up (2002), and total time spent in affluent neighborhoods and duration-weighted poverty. Among 1,550 households randomized to low-poverty neighborhoods, a smaller share of households reporting baseline child health problems (P= 0.004) took up the intervention (38%) than those not reporting a health problem (50%). In weighted and covariate-adjusted models, a child health problem predicted nearly 40% lower odds of complying with the experimental condition (odds ratio = 0.62, 95% confidence interval: 0.42,0.91; P= 0.015). Among compliers, a baseline child health problem predicted 2.5 percentage points' higher neighborhood poverty at take-up (95% confidence interval: 0.90,4.07; P= 0.002). We conclude that child health problems in a household prior to randomization predicted lower likelihood of using the program voucher to move to a low-poverty neighborhood within the experiment's low-poverty treatment arm and predicted selection into poorer neighborhoods among experimental compliers. Child morbidity may constrain families attempting to improve their life circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the article "Dreams Fulfilled, Dreams Shattered: Determinants of Segmented Assimilation in the Second Generation" by William Haller, Alejandro Portes, and Scott M. Lynch, published in the March 2011 issue of the journal "Social Forces."

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss an article on the changes to the timing and sequencing of adulthood, family changes that characterize the transition to adulthood and the employment for high school dropouts.

Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states -- California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles. html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To examine how physical health symptoms developed and resolved in response to Hurricane Katrina. Methods. We used data from a 2003 to 2018 study of young, low-income mothers who were living in New Orleans, Louisiana, when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 (n = 276). We fit logistic regressions to model the odds of first reporting or "developing" headaches or migraines, back problems, and digestive problems, and of experiencing remission or "recovery" from previously reported symptoms, across surveys. Results. The prevalence of each symptom increased after Hurricane Katrina, but the odds of developing symptoms shortly before versus after the storm were comparable. The number of traumatic experiences endured during Hurricane Katrina increased the odds of developing back and digestive problems just after the hurricane. Headaches or migraines and back problems that developed shortly after Hurricane Katrina were more likely to resolve than those that developed just before the storm. Conclusions. While traumatic experiences endured in disasters such as Hurricane Katrina appear to prompt the development of new physical symptoms, disaster-induced symptoms may be less likely to persist or become chronic than those emerging for other reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has provided robust evidence that exposure to potentially traumatic events (PTEs) during a disaster is predictive of adverse postdisaster mental health outcomes, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) and nonspecific psychological distress (PD). However, few studies have explored the role of exposure to other PTEs over the life‐course in shaping postdisaster mental health. Based on the broader literature on trauma exposure and mental health, we hypothesized a path analytic model linking predisaster PTEs to long‐term postdisaster PTSS and PD via predisaster PD, short‐term postdisaster symptoms, and disaster‐related and postdisaster PTEs. We tested this model using data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina study, a longitudinal study of low‐income, primarily non‐Hispanic Black mothers exposed to Hurricane Katrina and assessed before the disaster and at time points 1, 4, and 12 years thereafter. The models evidenced a good fit with the data, RMSEA <.01–.04, CFIs >.99. In addition, 44.1%–67.4% of the effect of predisaster PTEs on long‐term postdisaster symptoms was indirect. Descriptive differences were observed across models that included PTSS versus PD, as well as models that included all pre‐ and postdisaster PTEs versus only those that involved assaultive violence. The results suggest the importance of incorporating disaster preparedness in clinical work with trauma survivors and the value in attending to other lifetime PTEs when working in postdisaster contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change exacerbates the severity of natural disasters, which disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. Mitigating disasters’ health consequences is critical to promoting health equity, but few studies have isolated the short- and long-term effects of disasters on vulnerable groups. We filled this gap by conducting a fifteen-year (2003– 2018) prospective study of low-income, predominantly Black parents who experienced Hurricane Katrina: the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project. Here we describe this project and synthesize lessons from work that has resulted from it. Our findings can guide policy makers, service providers, and health officials in disaster planning and response. We synthesize them into an organizational schema of five priorities: Primary efforts should be aimed at preventing exposure to trauma through investments in climate resilience and by eliminating impediments to evacuation, health care policies should promote uninterrupted and expanded access to care, social services should integrate and strive to reduce the administrative burden on survivors, programs should aid survivors in forging or strengthening connections to their communities, and policy makers should fund targeted long-term services for highly affected survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a proliferation of research on neighborhood effects on health, how neighborhood economic development, in the form of gentrification, affects health and well-being in the USA is poorly understood, and no systematic assessment of the potential health impacts has been conducted. Further, we know little about whether health impacts differ for residents of neighborhoods undergoing gentrification versus urban development, or other forms of neighborhood socioeconomic ascent. We followed current guidelines for systematic reviews and present data on the study characteristics of the 22 empirical articles that met our inclusion criteria and were published on associations between gentrification, and similar but differently termed processes (e.g., urban regeneration, urban development, neighborhood upgrading), and health published between 2000 and 2018. Our results show that impacts on health vary by outcome assessed, exposure measurement, the larger context-specific determinants of neighborhood change, and analysis decisions including which reference and treatment groups to examine. Studies of the health impacts of gentrification, urban development, and urban regeneration describe similar processes, and synthesis and comparison of their results helps bridge differing theoretical approaches to this emerging research. Our article helps to inform the debate on the impacts of gentrification and urban development for health and suggests that these neighborhood change processes likely have both detrimental and beneficial effects on health. Given the influence of place on health and the trend of increasing gentrification and urban development in many American cities, we discuss how future research can approach understanding and researching the impacts of these processes for population health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-methods study aimed to gain knowledge of the lived experience of posttraumatic growth (PTG) in 32 low-income Black mothers whose New Orleans' homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and half of whom had relocated indefinitely to Houston. Data from in-depth interviews with participants were examined in conjunction with quantitative scores on the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). Participants were interviewed face-to-face on a range of postdisaster experiences, including positive changes, in 2009. Participants also completed the PTGI via a telephone survey within six months of being interviewed. Most (26 out of 32) participants described experiencing PTG within the 5 domains of the PTGI, with the domains most frequently coded, in descending order, being New Possibilities, Relating to Others, Personal Strength, Appreciation for Life, and Spiritual Change. PTG stemmed heavily from exposure to opportunities in survivors' postdisaster communities, including increased racial diversity, improved neighborhoods, and new educational and economic opportunities. Participants' frequency of all PTG codes was associated with their overall PTGI scores with a small-to-moderate effect size (r = .32; p = .078) in a relationship that trended toward significance. Without minimizing the catastrophic losses they entail, disasters may in some cases create spaces for PTG for survivors, including through new opportunities in areas where survivors formerly experienced oppression. Policymakers should examine how to make such opportunities available, visible and accessible to individuals absent a disaster. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and asthma in the wake of natural disasters is poorly understood. Using pre- and postdisaster data ( N = 405) from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) project, we examined associations between PTSD symptoms, measured by the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and self-reported postdisaster asthma attacks. A 1-point increase in the IES-R avoidance score, which corresponded to one standard deviation change in this sample, was associated with double the odds of reporting an asthma attack or episode since the hurricane, 95% CI Revise spacing among characters: [1.22, 4.16]. Association with hyperarousal and intrusion symptoms was null. Further research using objective measures of asthma morbidity is needed; nevertheless, these findings may help inform postdisaster health services delivery and predisaster mitigation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to a large literature investigating neighborhood effects on health, few studies have examined health as a determinant of neighborhood attainment. However, the sorting of individuals into neighborhoods by health status is a substantively important process for multiple policy sectors. We use prospectively collected data on 569 poor, predominantly African American Hurricane Katrina survivors to examine the extent to which health problems predicted subsequent neighborhood poverty. Our outcome of interest was participants' 2009-2010 census tract poverty rate. Participants were coded as having a health problem at baseline (2003-2004) if they self-reported a diagnosis of asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart problems, or any other physical health problems not listed, or complained of back pain, migraines, or digestive problems at baseline. Although health problems were not associated with neighborhood poverty at baseline, those with baseline health problems ended up living in higher poverty areas by 2009-2010. Differences persisted after adjustment for personal characteristics, baseline neighborhood poverty, hurricane exposure, and residence in the New Orleans metropolitan area, with baseline health problems predicting a 3.4 percentage point higher neighborhood poverty rate (95% confidence interval: 1.41, 5.47). Results suggest that better health was protective against later neighborhood deprivation in a highly mobile, socially vulnerable population. Researchers should consider reciprocal associations between health and neighborhoods when estimating and interpreting neighborhood effects on health. Understanding whether and how poor health impedes poverty deconcentration efforts may help inform programs and policies designed to help low-income families move to--and stay in--higher opportunity neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research suggests that walkable environments are protective against weight gain, while sprawling neighborhoods may pose health risks. Using prospective data on displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors, we provide the first natural experimental data on sprawl and body mass index (BMI). Methods The analysis uses prospectively collected pre- (2003-2005) and post-hurricane (2006-2007) data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) project on 280 displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors who had little control over their neighborhood placement immediately after the disaster. The county sprawl index, a standardized measure of built environment, was used to predict BMI at follow-up, adjusted for baseline BMI and sprawl; hurricane-related trauma; and demographic and economic characteristics. Results Respondents from 8 New Orleans-area counties were dispersed to 76 counties post-Katrina. Sprawl increased by an average of 1.5 standard deviations (30 points) on the county sprawl index. Each one point increase in sprawl was associated with approximately .05kg/m2 higher BMI in unadjusted models (95%CI: .01-.08), and the relationship was not attenuated after covariate adjustment. Conclusions We find a robust association between residence in a sprawling county and higher BMI unlikely to be caused by self-selection into neighborhoods, suggesting that the built environment may foster changes in weight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: There is considerable variation in psychological reactions to natural disasters, with responses ranging from relatively mild and transitory symptoms to severe and persistent posttraumatic stress (PTS). Some survivors also report post-traumatic growth (PTG), or positive psychological changes due to the experience and processing of the disaster and its aftermath. Gene–environment interaction (GxE) studies could offer new insight into the factors underlying variability in post-disaster psychological responses. However, few studies have explored GxE in a disaster context. Methods: We examined whether ten common variants in seven genes (BDNF, CACNA1C, CRHR1, FKBP5, OXTR, RGS2, SLC6A4) modified associations between Hurricane Katrina exposure and PTS and PTG. Data were from a prospective study of 205 low-income non-Hispanic Black parents residing in New Orleans prior to and following Hurricane Katrina. Results: We found a significant association (after correction) between RGS2 (rs4606; p=0.0044) and PTG, which was mainly driven by a cross-over GxE (p=0.006), rather than a main genetic effect (p=0.071). The G (minor allele) was associated with lower PTG scores for low levels of Hurricane exposure and higher PTG scores for moderate and high levels of exposure. We also found a nominally significant association between variation in FKBP5 (rs1306780, p=0.0113) and PTG, though this result did not survive correction for multiple testing. Limitations: Although the inclusion of low-income non-Hispanic Black parents allowed us to examine GxE among a highly vulnerable group, our findings may not generalize to other populations or groups experiencing other natural disasters. Moreover, not all participants invited to participate in the genetic study provided saliva. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify GxE in the context of post-traumatic growth. Future studies are needed to clarify the role of GxE in PTS and PTG and post-disaster psychological responses, especially among vulnerable populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reflects on encounters with scholar William Alfonso. Achievements of Alfonso; Views on Alfonso.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused unprecedented damage, widespread population displacement, and exposed Gulf Coast residents to traumatic events. The hurricane's adverse impact on survivors' mental health was apparent shortly after the storm and persisted, but no study has examined the long-term effects now that more than a decade has transpired. Using new data from a panel study of low-income mothers interviewed once before Hurricane Katrina and now three times after, we document changes in mental health, and estimate the sociodemographic and hurricane-related factors associated with long-term trajectories of mental health. We find that post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) declined at each of the three post-Katrina follow-ups, but 12 years after the hurricane, one in six still had symptoms indicative of probable post-traumatic stress disorder. The rate of non-specific psychological distress (PD) remained consistently higher in all three follow-ups, compared to the pre-disaster period. In full covariate-adjusted models, no sociodemographic variables predicted long-run combinations of PTSS and PD. However, 12 years later, exposure to hurricane-related traumatic events and pre-disaster PD significantly predicted co-occurring PTSS and PD. Hurricane-related housing damage predicted PTSS in earlier follow-ups, but no longer predicted PTSS in the long-term. Furthermore, hurricane-related traumatic events significantly differentiated the risk of having persistent PTSS, relative to recovering from PTSS. The results suggest that there is still a non-negligible group of survivors with continued need for recovery resources and that exposure to traumatic events is a primary predictor of adverse mental health more than a decade post-disaster. • Hurricane-related traumas predict persistent post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). • Twelve years after Katrina, PTSS remains in one in six sampled low-income mothers. • Hurricane-related traumas predict comorbid psychological distress (PD) and PTSS. • Pre-disaster PD increases the likelihood of adverse mental health in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]