Socioeconomic Socio Based Health Disparities - 2180 Words

It is well documented that lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with worse health among adults(Adler, Boyce, Chesney, Folkman, Syme, n.d.) and adolescents.(Finkelstein, Kubzansky, Goodman, 2006; Goodman, 1999; Starfield B, Riley AW, Witt WP, Robertson, 2002) Objective measures of SES such as level of education, income, and occupation are the most common methodology used in health literature to describe socioeconomic-based health disparities.(Shavers VL, 2007) However, subjective social status (SSS) is also a relevant predictor of health, independent of SES. (Adler NE, Epel ES, Castellazzo G, Ickovics, 2000; Aneshensel CS, Sucoff, 1996) Indeed, there is a small but growing body of literature about people’s perceptions of†¦show more content†¦populations.(Franzini Fernandez-Esquer, 2006) This issue has particular relevance for the Latino community because many Latinos have health outcomes that are comparable to or better than their U.S. white counterparts even though they have lower average SES.(Palloni A, Morenoff, 2001) Given this paradox, there is a need to more deeply explore how SES and SSS play out for Latinos in an effort to truly understand and capture disparities in health and health behaviors in this population. The purpose of this study was to compare the relationship between SSS and health behaviors and objective SES and health behaviors in a pilot study sample of Latina adolescents. We hypothesize that SSS is more likely to predict health behaviors among Latina adolescents than traditional measures of SES and that Latina teens with higher SSS will be more likely to report healthy behaviors. Methods A pilot longitudinal study was conducted to implement a newly developed Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data