The Community Child Health Network Life Stress Interview: a brief chronic stress measure for community health research.

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.

Shedding Light on the Mechanisms Underlying Health Disparities Through Community Participatory Methods: The Stress Pathway.

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.

The effects of acculturation on asthma burden in a community sample of Mexican American schoolchildren.

Objectives: We sought to determine whether low acculturation among Mexican American caregivers protects their children against asthma.

Methods: Data were obtained from an observational study of urban pediatric asthma. Dependent variables were children's diagnosed asthma and total (diagnosed plus possible) asthma.

Context matters: a community-based study of maternal mental health, life stressors, social support, and children's asthma.

Objective: Recent national survey data indicate an overall asthma prevalence of 12.2% for children who are younger than 18 years. Previous research in clinical samples of children with asthma suggests that their mothers are at greater risk for symptoms of depression.

Child well-being in an era of welfare reform: the sensitivity of transitions in development to policy change.

This study examined the age-specific pattern of effects of welfare policies on child achievement. Drawing from 7 random-assignment welfare and antipoverty evaluations that provided more than 30,000 observations of children's achievement, this study found that times of developmental transition are the only periods sensitive to the changes in families brought about by these policies. More specifically, small positive effects of welfare and antipoverty policies were found for children making the transition into middle childhood, and small negative effects of these same policies were found for children making the transition out of middle childhood and into early adolescence.