Incidents of discrimination are a part of everyday life for young people of color, and although many studies document the negative effects of discrimination, we know almost nothing about how it influences health over time. How do experiences of bias and mistreatment play a part in creating racial and ethnic health disparities? This pilot study for Whole Communities–Whole Health is focusing on how technology can help us learn how discrimination affects young people’s physical health. We are testing the feasibility of integrating real-time methods of measurement, including sleep quantity and quality, physical activity, and cardiovascular indicators, with daily journal entries and other available community-level data. By examining discriminatory processes and health during adolescence, findings will suggest possible points of intervention, which could have the potential to address how discrimination and chronic stress may lead to a heightened and lasting risk for chronic disease. Attention is also placed on how stress related to the current COVID-19 pandemic may be particularly detrimental for young people experiencing discrimination in their daily lives.
Progress and Results: Data collection with a small group of adolescents prior to the pandemic suggests that a) adolescents were compliant in using all three of the activity and health monitoring wearables, although they indicated a preference for the wrist wearables over the ring; b) completion of the required nutrition app activities were inconsistent, suggesting that these apps may not be reliably used with our population, and c) adolescents expressed a general willingness to have their cell phone activity monitored as part of future research. We recently completed a 14-day daily diary on the central constructs of the pilot study with 145 adolescents, and efforts are currently underway to clean the data and begin data analysis; unfortunately, we were not able to integrate any of the targeted technology due to social distancing restrictions enacted due to the pandemic.