Hosted by the GPH Center for Anti-Racism, Social Justice and Public Health (CASJPH)
Leading causes of death and disease across the lifespan can be traced to modifiable behavioral health indicators which originate in adolescence. Particularly, the etiology of substance use, psychological distress, and sexual risk behaviors and their co-occurrence are known to be related to numerous adverse health and social consequences. Vulnerable adolescents are those youth who have intersectional demographic and/or cultural identities which may increase their risk of inequitable behavioral health outcomes over time. Research has shown that substance use, psychological distress, and sexual risk behaviors tend to co-occur in adolescence and prevention scientists have proposed studying multiple behavioral health risks simultaneously—rather than focusing on a single risk. A significant limitation of this type of research is the difficulty in understanding which aspects of each risk behavior are related to others (e.g., lack of condom use related to substance use but not number of partners).
In this presentation, join Tamika Gilreath, PhD from the Texas A&M School of Public Health in a discussion that will focus on strategies to examine concurrent risk, how patterns of risk are influenced by intersectional factors, and discuss how examining behavioral health indicators simultaneously in vulnerable populations may lead to significant cost-saving opportunities for tailored and targeted prevention focusing on multiple behaviors.