Browsing by Author "Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Acculturation and Self-Rated Health among Latino and Asian Immigrants to the United States
    (University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, 2012-08) Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert; Gorman, Bridget K.; Schachter, Ariela
    The ways in which immigrant health profiles change with shifts in acculturation is of increasing interest to scholars and policy makers in the United States, but little is known about the mechanisms that may link acculturation and self-rated health, particularly for Asians. Utilizing the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS) and its data on foreign-born Latinos (N = 1,199) and Asians( N = 1,323) (Pennelletal.2004), we investigate and compare the associations between acculturation and self-rated health for immigrants to the United States from six major ethnic subgroups (Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican). Using comprehensive measures of acculturation, we demonstrate that across ethnic groups, and despite the widely varying contexts of the sending countries and receiving communities, native-language dominance is associated with worse self-rated health relative to bilingualism, and measures of lower acculturation--coethnic ties and remittances—are associated with better self-rated health; and moreover, these associations are only partially mediated by socioeconomic status, and not mediated by acculturative stress, discrimination, social support, or health behaviors. We speculate that immigrants who maintain a native language while also acquiring English, as has been shown for other immigrant outcomes, attain a bicultural fluency, which also enables good health. Surprisingly, we do not find strong associations between duration of time in the United States or age at migrationﾗ measures frequently used to proxy acculturationﾗwith self-rated health. Our findings illustrate the complexity of measuring acculturation and its influence on health for immigrants.
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    Are federal food assistance programs part of the childhood obesity problem?
    (2010) Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert; Rigby, Elizabeth; James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
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    Community social environments and cigarette smoking
    (Elsevier, 2022) Denney, Justin T.; Sharp, Gregory; Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert
    Cigarette smoking remains a primary contributor to health disparities in the United States, and significant evidence suggests that smoking behavior is socially influenced. Though residential neighborhoods are important for health disparities, recent evidence suggests that people spend the majority of their waking time away from the residential neighborhood. We advance research on neighborhoods and smoking by using individual, neighborhood, and activity space data for adults in the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A.FANS). Moving beyond socioeconomic indicators of neighborhoods, we investigate the ways in which residential neighborhood social cohesion, neighborly exchange, and perceived danger impact smoking behavior after accounting for confounding factors in both the residential neighborhood and other activity spaces in which adults spend their days. We find that perceptions of danger in the residential neighborhood is robustly associated with the likelihood of smoking cigarettes. Further, measures of community social organization interact with perceived danger to influence smoking behavior. Adults with high levels of perceived danger are twice as likely to smoke if residing in communities with lower levels of social organization in the form of helpful, trusting, and supportive relationships. Understanding how the social organization of communities contributes to smoking disparities is important for curbing smoking's impact on population health.
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    Deciding to Wait: Partnership Status, Economic Conditions, and Pregnancy during the Great Recession
    (Sociological Science, 2017) Percheski, Christine; Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert
    The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States. Many questions about the dynamics underlying this reduction remain unanswered, however, including whether reduced fertility rates were driven by decreases in intended or unplanned pregnancies. Using restricted data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 4,630), we exploit variation in state economic indicators to assess the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of an intended pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or no pregnancy for adult women without a college education. We focus on variations by partnership and marital status. Overall, we find that worse economic conditions were predictive of a lower risk of unplanned pregnancy. Women’s odds of intended pregnancy did not, however, respond uniformly to economic conditions but varied by marital status. When economic conditions were poor, married women had lower odds of intended pregnancy, whereas cohabiting women had greater odds of intended pregnancy.
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    The Role of Prosocial Behavior in Promoting Physical Activity, as an Indicator of Resilience, in a Low-Income Neighborhood
    (Taylor & Francis, 2020) Moore, Quianta L.; Kulesza, Christopher F.; Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert; Flores, Daphne; Jackson, Felicia
    The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of prosocial behavior on physical activity, as an indicator of resilience, in a low-income neighborhood with adverse built environment and social conditions. Resilience is an important factor that promotes the ability for individuals to overcome hardships, and understanding resilience as it relates to health behavior is important in the efforts to improve the health and wellbeing of vulnerable communities. There are many constructs of resilience, and we selected physical activity as an indicator of resilience because of the role of physical activity in health promotion. A community based participatory research approach was utilized to conduct a door knock survey in a sample of 2,457 households in a low-income, historically African-American neighborhood. Fifty-seven percent of residents completed the survey. Physical activity was the dependent variable and we controlled for key demographics, resident health, primary mode of transportation and neighborhood safety. Prosocial behavior was the primary independent variable. We conducted descriptive, bivariate and multivariate analyses and found prosocial behavior was significantly correlated with moderate physical activity, despite adverse conditions. Our results indicate that prosocial behavior plays an important role in an individual's ability to engage in health-promoting behaviors, such as physical activity, despite challenges.