Project

SSDP – Environmental Mechanisms for Health, Drug Abuse, and HIV Risk Behavior In The 30s

Project Description

This study investigates the interrelationships among physical health (including increasing rates of obesity), mental health, drug abuse, and HIV risk in the 30s by augmenting data from the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP). The study examines the health effects of two broad environmental domains: the social environment – defined by social interactions and developmental experiences hypothesized to affect health through positive adult functioning (in marriage, parenthood, career, community, etc.); and the built environment – defined by a neighborhood’s physical features hypothesized to affect health through physical activity. The diverse sample also provides an opportunity to investigate environmental factors and mechanisms that can explain disparities in health, drug abuse, and HIV risk outcomes by gender, ethnicity, and economic status. New objective measures of the built environment, physical activity, and health outcomes at age 39 are added to 14 waves of prospective data from age 10 through age 35. Our goal is to understand the mechanisms linking social and built environments to interrelated health problems, drug abuse, and HIV sexual risk behavior in the 30s, and the contribution of these mechanisms to explaining health disparities.