2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

327057
Substance use typologies among late adolescent African American women: Testing differences in risk across collegiate settings


Sunday, November 1, 2015

Aubrey Madkour, PhD, Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Jakevia Green, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Jennifer Latimer, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Taylor Johnson, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Norine Schmidt, MPH, Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Gretchen Clum, PhD, MA, Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Carolyn C. Johnson, PhD, Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Patricia Kissinger, BSN, MPH, PhD, Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Background: Few studies have examined the epidemiology of substance use among African American young women, including whether risk for substance use varies across collegiate settings within this group.

Methods: Young African American women (ages 18-19) were recruited from a community college, historically black universities, and community sites to participate in an online teen pregnancy prevention program RCT.  At baseline, participants reported lifetime alcohol, marijuana and other illicit drug use, as well as past three month alcohol use, binge drinking, and marijuana use. Respondents were categorized by study recruitment site: four-year university (U), community college (CC), or no college (NC).  Latent class analysis (LCA) determined latent classes of substance use.  Bivariate multinomial logistic regression determined the association between collegiate settings and substance use classes.

Results: Of 435 participants, 61% reported drinking alcohol, 24% reported binge drinking, and 31% reported marijuana use in the past three months. LCA results suggested four latent typologies of substance use: recent abstainers (31.1%), recent drinkers (29.8%), marijuana users (8.1%), and partiers (used both alcohol and marijuana recently, 31.0%).  In multinomial analyses, substance use patterns did not vary significantly between collegiate settings (NC vs. U p=0.18; CC vs. U p=0.55; NC vs. CC p=0.40).

Conclusions: A substantial proportion of young African American women exhibited >1 recent legal and illegal substance use behaviors, with nearly a third evidencing use of >2 substances.  Future analyses should examine factors contributing to substance use in this group, as well as the health and social consequences of various substance use patterns.

Learning Areas:

Diversity and culture
Epidemiology
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Describe typologies of substance use among young African American women Compare risk for substance use typologies across various collegiate settings for young African American women

Keyword(s): Alcohol Use, Drug Abuse

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been conducting research in the area of adolescent health risk behaviors for over 10 years. I am the PI of an NIAAA funded K01 to examine contextual determinants of binge drinking trajectories between adolescence and early adulthood. I also am a co-Investigator of the unintended pregnancy prevention study from which data were drawn for this analysis. I conceptualized the proposed presentation, and carried out the analyses.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 2059.0: Polysubstance use in youth, emerging adults, and other priority populations