Effective mentoring of underrepresented scholars in the biobehavioral and health sciences is vital for the future of scientific inquiry, as well as for clinical and public health applications. ...Through the mentoring process, both the mentee and mentor can benefit by broadening their knowledge, skills, and perspectives relative to the professional goals and interests of the mentee. Establishing a trusting and nurturing relationship allows the mentor and mentee to identify short- and long-term goals, accompanied by strategies designed to maximize the mentee's success. Many relationships benefit from establishing explicit working guidelines early on, with recognition that flexibility may be necessary as the relationship matures. Adapting to the specific needs and challenges facing underrepresented doctoral trainees and early career scholars, we propose an integrative developmental framework informed by 3 fundamental assumptions: (a) the mentee's professional growth and personal development are intertwined; (b) the mentee's goals will evolve and sometimes change over time; and (c) reflective analysis of the distinctive skill sets, life experiences, and limits of the mentor and mentee will help strengthen the mentoring plan. A challenging issue in mentoring is how to individualize the approach for each mentee, recognizing the need to balance mentor support and advice with opportunities for mentee independence, self-appraisal, and creativity. We share our developmental framework with the hope that others may adapt this as a practical template to develop a joint plan amenable to intermittent monitoring to optimize productivity and personally rewarding professional career trajectories for an increasingly diverse workforce.
Public Policy Relevance Statement
Building on current initiatives and incorporating new and innovative resources while recognizing inadequacies of the past are critical for effective mentoring of underrepresented doctoral trainees and early career scholars in biobehavioral and health sciences. We advance an integrative developmental framework to help navigate this process. We wholeheartedly believe that mentoring is an honor and privilege and that it should support a professional environment that will be attractive for future recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce.
This study examined the intergenerational transmission of abuse among a sample of 681 teen, adult low-resource, and adult high-resource first-time mothers. Participants ranged in age from 14 to 36 ...years, with a mean of 20 years. Exposure to childhood emotional and to physical abuse were associated with 6-month parenting behavior but not with parenting knowledge. Teen mothers, as opposed to adult mothers, had higher mean scores for exposure to childhood emotional and physical abuse. Adult high-resource mothers reported lower mean scores on each abuse outcome than both teen and adult low-resource mothers. For the total sample of mothers, as past exposure to emotional and physical abuse increased, maternal responsivity decreased and opinions toward, and propensities for, abusive behavior increased.
Health disparities are large and persistent gaps in the rates of disease and death between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status subgroups in the population. Stress is a major pathway hypothesized ...to explain such disparities. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development formed a community/research collaborative—the Community Child Health Network—to investigate disparities in maternal and child health in five high-risk communities. Using community participation methods, we enrolled a large cohort of African American/Black, Latino/Hispanic, and non-Hispanic/White mothers and fathers of newborns at the time of birth and followed them over 2 years. A majority had household incomes near or below the federal poverty level. Home interviews yielded detailed information regarding multiple types of stress such as major life events and many forms of chronic stress including racism. Several forms of stress varied markedly by racial/ethnic group and income, with decreasing stress as income increased among Caucasians but not among African Americans; other forms of stress varied by race/ethnicity or poverty alone. We conclude that greater sophistication in studying the many forms of stress and community partnership is necessary to uncover the mechanisms underlying health disparities in poor and ethnic-minority families and to implement community health interventions.
To examine differences in prenatal depression among first-time mothers who had a subsequent pregnancy within 6 months of first birth and those who did not. Mothers with depression symptoms were ...expected to have a greater likelihood of rapid subsequent pregnancy.
The Parenting for the First Time study is a longitudinal multisite prospective descriptive study designed to identify and understand the dynamics of subthreshold neglectful parenting behaviors among first-time mothers. Data were collected from the prenatal period through the child's first 3 years of life. The Parenting for the First Time sample consisted of 684 first-time mothers between 15 and 36 years. Data were available on prenatal depression and subsequent pregnancy at 6 months for 279 participants (n = 279).
Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the odds of subsequent pregnancy within 6 months of first birth.
Twelve mothers (5.9%) became pregnant within 6 months of first birth. The odds of subsequent pregnancy were 7.24 greater (95% confidence interval CI: 2.18-24.04) among mothers with moderate-to-severe depression. White versus non-White race did not influence subsequent pregnancy (0.91, 95% CI: 0.18-4.49). Pregnancy was not significantly different between teen and adult mothers (odds ratio: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.24-3.68).
In this sample of first time mothers, moderate-to-severe depression symptoms were associated with subsequent pregnancy within 6 months of first birth. Routine depression screening by nurses during the prenatal period offers opportunities for intensive contraceptive counseling and may help mothers achieve optimal birth spacing.
Objective: Parental depression influences family health but research on low-income African American fathers is limited. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the role of paternal risk ...factors and resilience resources in predicting depressive symptoms in the year after birth of a child in a sample of African American fathers. We hypothesized that paternal risk factors (low socioeconomic status SES, perceived stress, negative life events, racism, avoidant coping style) and resources (social support, self-esteem, collective efficacy, approach-oriented coping style) would predict depressive symptoms in fathers at 1 year postbirth controlling for depressive symptoms at 1 month postbirth. Method: African American fathers (n = 296) of predominantly low SES from 5 U.S. regions were interviewed at 1 and 12 months after birth of a child regarding potential risk factors, resilience resources, and depressive symptoms. Results: Depressive symptoms were low on average. However, hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that avoidant coping style and experiences of racism predicted more depressive symptoms in fathers nearly a year after the birth of a child controlling for symptoms at 1 month. Conclusions: How fathers cope with stress and common everyday experiences of racism contributed to depressive symptoms in the year following birth of a child. Interventions that target race-related stressors and decrease avoidant coping may promote better outcomes in this important and understudied population.
About one in four college students report grieving the death of a family member or close friend within the past year. Although grief may be difficult at any time, there are several factors unique to ...the college age and environment that can make it particularly difficult. These factors include geographic distance from home and usual support systems, academic demands, college's "carefree" social life, lack of grief support from peers, and many college campuses' limited resources for grief support. Thus, grieving college students are at greater risk than their peers of a host of academic, social, and developmental issues. In spite of this "silent epidemic," few targeted, supportive interventions existed on college campuses until 2006, when National Students of AMF was created by grieving college students to support their fellow grieving students. National Students of AMF primarily achieves its mission by creating Campus Chapters, which are university-recognized student organizations. They include a targeted, peer-led Support Group for grieving students to connect with others who "get it" and a Service Group that encourages students to channel their grief towards championing causes that have impacted them. Abundant anecdotal evidence suggests that students, especially males, who shy away from support groups and professional counseling, have found participation in service activities in honor of deceased loved ones to be a preferable therapeutic outlet. Campus Chapters also leverage the "student voice" to promote the other, often underutilized supportive grief resources on campus. Today, there are 43 university-recognized Campus Chapters. In this article, we discuss findings and outline several vital steps that university counselors and administrators can take to facilitate the continued growth of supportive outlets, like National Students of AMF, for grieving college students.
Background and Objectives: Chronic stress is implicated in many theories as a contributor to a wide range of physical and mental health problems. The current study describes the development of a ...chronic stress measure that was based on the UCLA Life Stress Interview (LSI) and adapted in collaboration with community partners for use in a large community health study of low-income, ethnically diverse parents of infants in the USA (Community Child Health Network CCHN). We describe the instrument, its purpose and adaptations, implementation, and results of a reliability study in a subsample of the larger study cohort. Design and Methods: Interviews with 272 mothers were included in the present study. Chronic stress was assessed using the CCHN LSI, an instrument designed for administration by trained community interviewers to assess four domains of chronic stress, each rated by interviewers. Results: Significant correlations ranging from small to moderate in size between chronic stress scores on this measure, other measures of stress, biomarkers of allostatic load, and mental health provide initial evidence of construct and concurrent validity. Reliability data for interviewer ratings are also provided. Conclusions: This relatively brief interview (15 minutes) is available for use and may be a valuable tool for researchers seeking to measure chronic stress reliably and validly in future studies with time constraints.
Using survey data from former Head Start children in the third grade from 15 sites across the nation (n = 576), this study examines the relationship between maternal subjective neighborhood ...attributions and their children's behavioral problems. Maternal perceptions of neighborhood characteristics were measured across five domains, including collective efficacy, barriers to services, negative neighbor affects, probability of child status attainment success, and overall neighborhood rating. Children's problem behaviors, measured with the Social Skills Rating System, includes externalizing and internalizing outcomes. Our results suggest that the worse the maternal assessments on each neighborhood construct, the greater the extent of children's problem behavior, holding constant child demographic factors and parental socioeconomic status. In addition, we find that family income effects on children's problem behavior are partially mediated by these perceived neighborhood domains. Taken together, these results suggest that neighborhood deprivation is related to problematic behavioral outcomes in children.
PROBLEM: Greater understanding is needed related to qualitatively assess pregnancy intentions and rapid subsequent pregnancies among adolescent and adult mothers.
METHODS: Four‐site prospective ...study of 227 adolescent and adult mothers. Data were analyzed to understand the relationship between pregnancy intentions, adolescent status, and use of long‐acting contraceptives and rapid subsequent pregnancy.
FINDINGS: The findings from this study provide evidence of the importance of goal‐oriented pregnancy intentions, long‐acting contraceptive use, and older age in delaying a second pregnancy.
CONCLUSION: Findings reveal the need for clinician awareness of the qualitative pregnancy intentions of young women and potential desired use of long‐acting contraceptives.
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