Citation

Vaca FE, Summers DL, Roney L, Violano P, Moriarty-Daley A, Dziura J, Anderson CL. Ann. Adv. Automot. Med. 2013; 57: 369-372.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

24406980

PMCID

PMC3861838

Abstract

Motor vehicle crashes (MVC) are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens and cause the largest proportion of mortality among Latino adolescent males. MVC-related injury disparities persist and are growing among U.S. Latino adolescent males, where current mortality rates exceed those of their non-Latino white peers. For adolescent drivers, substance use is a known risk factor for a serious or fatal MVC. Acculturation in U.S. Latino adolescents has been previously shown to play an important role in substance use propensity (Castro, Stein, & Bentler, 2009), while substance use of any kind is linked to an increase in MVC risk among adolescents (Dunlop & Romer, 2010). Despite the negative effects of poverty, low education, and poor access to healthcare, U.S. Latinos as a group have been noted for having health outcomes similar, and in some cases, better than non-Latino white peers in what is commonly described as the “Latino Epidemiological Paradox” (Morales, Lara, Kington, Valdez, & Escarce, 2002). We sought to assess the effects of acculturation and parent connectedness on behaviors increasing the risk of crash injury in Latino adolescent males.

We enrolled a total of 138 Latino adolescent males with an overall mean age of 16.9 years. Males of Puerto Rican descent represented the largest portion of the sample (59.1%) and although the majority of participants were US-born (61.6%), most had at least one parent that was foreign born (84.1%). Few adolescents had a driver’s license or permit (10.1%) and many reported unlicensed driving (55.1%). Increasing acculturation was a good predictor of marijuana use, predicting lifetime use (p< 0.001), age of initiation (p= 0.021), and recent use (p= 0.011). Low parent connectedness had significant associations with reports of having been in a motor vehicle crash (p= 0.014), cigarette smoking (p= 0.003) and having recently started smoking (p< 0.001). Low parent connectedness was also a good predictor of binge drinking behavior, predicting both occasions of having 5+ drinks (p= 0.006) and number of ...

Language: en