CONTACTS: Carole Gan UC Davis Medical Center (916) 734-9040 Conference Press Room, May 1-4 (415) 905-1001, 02, 03
SUBSTANCE ABUSE IN TEENS LINKED TO ETHNICITY - Physician researchers from UC Davis Medical Center today announced results from a preliminary survey of high school students that shows African American and Latino students are at higher risk of initiating substance abuse than their Caucasian peers. The findings will be announced at the Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting in San Francisco in May.
Lisa Guerra, a UC Davis pediatrician and lead author of the research, studied responses from 8,550 high school students that participated in the national 1995 Youth Risk Behavior Study conducted by the Center for Disease Control. Respondents were asked to report if and when they began using "licit" substances such as tobacco and alcohol, and "illicit" substances such as cocaine and marijuana. Teens who took the survey were categorized into one of the five following groups to describe their self-reported sequence of substance use: none, licit substances only, licit then illicit substances, illicit then licit substances, or licit and illicit substances simultaneously.
Adjusting for factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, region of the country and maternal education, African Americans were 1.5 times more likely than Caucasians to progress from licit to illicit substances. And when their mothers had a high school education or more, African American students were 3 times more likely to experiment with illicit substances first than Caucasian students whose mothers had the same level of education. Latino girls whose mothers had a high school education or more, were about 6 times more likely than their Caucasian counterparts to use cocaine and marijuana before legal substances.
"The results of this study are surprising and opposite of what we expected," Guerra says. "We expected that students whose mothers had a high school education or better would be less likely to initially experiment with illicit substances, regardless of ethnicity. Maternal education may really be measuring other significant risk factors, such as the number of years spent in this country, country of origin, or time spent with the child. We definitely need further studies to determine why we see this difference, and what role maternal education plays, if at all."
Guerra emphasizes that the 1995 behavioral survey is a preliminary look into the problem of teen substance abuse and that future studies should be conducted over a longer period of time and include other social and environmental factors, such as acculturation, peer norms, teen attitudes, community and school characteristics, and family life. Further, she stresses that students who were not in school to take the survey may be at the greatest risk for substance abuse and should also be included in future studies.
"This study isn't an answer, but it is a way to see what's going on in the lives of these high school students," Guerra says. "We want to understand the results of this survey before we jump in and seek answers."
As a pediatrician, Guerra says she often sees teenagers after they have already become involved with harmful substances. "Looking at the results of this survey is the first step to developing and supporting a program in a clinic and community setting that can reach out to teens before they initiate substance abuse," she says.
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The study, High Risk Behavior Sequences in Adolescents by Ethnicity, was funded by Guerra's fellowship from the Office of Minority Health and the Hispanic Center of Excellence at UC Davis School of Medicine. Co-authors of the study include Patrick Romano, an internist and pediatrician at UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, and Steven Samuels and Philip Kass, both of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center.
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During the meeting, please call the Moscone Convention Center press room at 415-905-1001 to speak with researchers or [email protected].
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