"Making the Ordinary More Extraordinary": Exploring Creativity as a Health Promotion Practice Among Older Adults in a Community-Based Professionally Taught Arts Program.

Purpose: Document psychosocial and mental well-being outcomes across artistic mediums and classes of a community-based, professionally taught arts program for older adults.

Method: One hundred and thirty-eight students completed pre and post class surveys about expectations/experiences when creating art in four mediums (painting, drawing, mixed media, creative writing). In addition, 162 students composed one-paragraph biographical narratives describing their relationships to art and creative engagement.

Stress, Pregnancy, and Motherhood: Implications for Birth Weights in the Borderlands of Texas.

We argue that changes over time in how ideas of stress are incorporated into understandings of pregnancy and motherhood among Mexican immigrant women living in the United States may affect the documented increase of low birth weight infants born to those women. Stress has consistently been linked to low birth weight, and pregnant Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women differ in levels of perceived social stress. What is lacking is an explanation for these differences.

Reproductive habitus, psychosocial health, and birth weight variation in Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women in south Texas.

The Latina Paradox, or persistent, unexplained variation in low birth weight rates in recently immigrated Mexican women and the trend toward higher rates in subsequent generations of Mexican American women, is most often attributed to unidentified sociocultural causes. We suggest herein that different disciplinary approaches can be synthesized under the constructs of reproductive habitus and subjective social status to identify influences of sociocultural processes on birth weight. Reproductive habitus are "modes of living the reproductive body, bodily practices, and the creation of new subjects through interactions between people and structures" (Smith-Oka, 2012: 2276).

Subjective Social Status, Mental and Psychosocial Health, and Birth Weight Differences in Mexican-American and Mexican Immigrant Women.

Recent Mexican immigrant women on average have an unexpectedly low incidence of low birth weight (LBW). Birth weights decline and LBW incidence increases in post-immigrant generations. This pilot project tested the hypothesis that subjective social status (SSS) of pregnant women predicts variation in birth weight between Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American women.

Perceived social stress, pregnancy-related anxiety, depression and subjective social status among pregnant Mexican and Mexican American women in south Texas.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine differences in subjective social status, perceived social stress, depressive symptoms, and pregnancy-related anxiety between pregnant Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women.

Methods: Three hundred pregnant Mexican immigrant and Mexican American women in South Texas were surveyed for pregnancy-related anxiety, perceived social stress, depressive symptoms, and subjective social status.

Results: Pregnant Mexican immigrant women had higher levels of pregnancy-related anxiety and lower levels of depression and perceived social stress than pregnant Mexican American women.