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Social scientists often speculate that both acculturation and socioeconomic status are factors that may explain differences in the body weight between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants, yet prior research has not explicitly theorized and tested the pathways that lead both of these upstream factors to contribute to ethnic/nativity disparities in weight. We make this contribution to the literature by developing a conceptual model drawing from Glass and McAtee’s (2006) risk regulation framework. We test this model by analyzing data from the 1999–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Our conceptual model treats acculturation and socioeconomic status as risk regulators, or social factors that place individuals in positions where they are at risk for health risk behaviors that negatively influence health outcomes. We specifically argue that acculturation and low socioeconomic status contribute to less healthy diets, lower physical activity, and chronic stress, which then increases the risk of weight gain. We further contend that pathways from ethnicity/nativity and through acculturation and socioeconomic status likely explain disparities in weight gain between Mexican Americans and whites and between Mexican immigrants and whites. Study results largely support our conceptual model and have implications for thinking about solutions for reducing ethnic/nativity disparities in weight.

To determine healthcare utilization issues for low-income Hispanic immigrants who have both excess weight and chronic pain.

Community health workers conducted at-home interviews with 101 middle-aged and older Mexican Americans (aged 40-79 years, M=52.1±8.8) associated with a community agency in southern California to evaluate healthcare underutilization and reported reasons for not using medical or pharmaceutical care.

Almost all participants (91 percent) reported having received at least some medical care in the year preceding the study interview. However, at some point during the prior year, 62 percent had not seen a doctor when it was needed and 45 percent had not taken a prescribed medication. While the primary reason for underutilization was financial, communication, and trust reasons were also reported.

Although cross-sectional and geographically restricted, this study lays the foundation for additional research on reasons for underutilization of recommended healthcare and lack of pain management in low-income Hispanic immigrants who are overweight and have chronic pain.

Policy implications include the urgent need for health insurance.

Implications for providers include the need for accurate pain assessment and better communication about medication to prevent non-adherence in this population.

The current study highlights the existence of healthcare underutilization among overweight and obese Mexican Americans with chronic pain and identifies specific barriers to care, care seeking, and pain management.

Using the data from a unique sample of Mexican-American adults from the U.S.-Mexico border area, this chapter offers explanations for Mexican-American obesity, with the special focus on immigrant generation status, income, and gender. On a theoretical plane, this study attempts to apply the nutrition transition theory to the study of immigrant assimilation in a regional context. Considered are the most important structural dimensions of immigrant assimilation – country of birth (the United States vs. Mexico) and age of arrival. Of the two aforementioned factors, age of arrival is found to be a stronger predictor of obesity that country of birth. As Mexican-American immigrants’ length of residence increases, so does their Body Mass Index (BMI) that reflects the adoption of less diverse diet and sedentary lifestyles. Through the use of multilevel hierarchical modeling, I also found sizeable variation in obesity by income, gender, and family history of obesity. The analyses suggest that the interventions aimed at reducing overweight and obesity among Mexican-Americans in the U.S.-Mexico border region should be better targeted by focusing on women and low-income households.

Purpose – Utilizing the intersectionality framework, this study examines how a racially diverse group of adults aim to balance work–family life.Methodology/approach – This chapter uses qualitative data from the Intersections of Family, Work, and Health Study consisting of 132 black, white, and Mexican-American adults.Findings – We find that socioeconomic status and marriage provide social and economic capital to more easily fulfill role obligations. Individuals with more capital have more choices and are offered a chess board and a variety of pieces to facilitate the goal of creating work–family harmony. Individuals with less capital end up with less job flexibility and play checkers through rigid concrete roles because work decisions are in the hands of their employers instead of their own.Social implications – This chapter sheds light on the influence of high social status and the ability some individuals have to maximize both job flexibility and autonomy in managing work–family life. As we show here, married middle-class whites are able to manage work–family life better than professional black single mothers and working class Mexican Americans by having the ability to choose to play checkers or chess.Originality/value of chapter – We argue that the concept of “balancing” does little to express the ways individuals negotiate the constraints of work and family. By using an intersectionality perspective, we show that conceptualizing work–family life as “checkers or chess” games allow for the cognitive process of decision making (in terms of, for example, time pressures and perceived role demands) to be assessed more efficiently across work–family domains.

Using microdata from the 2000 US Census, we analyze the responses of Mexican Americans to questions that independently elicit their “ethnicity” (or Hispanic origin) and their “ancestry.” We investigate whether different patterns of responses to these questions reflect varying degrees of ethnic attachment. For example, those identified as “Mexican” in both the Hispanic origin and the ancestry questions might have stronger ethnic ties than those identified as Mexican only in the ancestry question. How US-born Mexicans report their ethnicity/ancestry is strongly associated with measures of human capital and labor market performance. In particular, educational attainment, English proficiency, and earnings are especially high for men and women who claim a Mexican ancestry but report their ethnicity as “not Hispanic.” Further, intermarriage and the Mexican identification of children are also strongly related to how US-born Mexican adults report their ethnicity/ancestry, revealing a possible link between the intergenerational transmission of Mexican identification and economic status.

Past studies have shown that acculturation has been linked with media consumption (Shi, 2005; Shohat & Stam, 1996). Some risky health behaviors are associated with immigrants’ acculturation into the American society. In this study, we investigate the association between Latino adolescents’ recreational use of media with acculturation as related to risky health behaviors such as the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, the experience of getting sunburns, smoking, and drinking alcohol.

Regression models were run to analyze the Latino adolescent subsample (aged 12–17) of the 2009 California Health Interview Survey (Ponce et al., 2004).

The regression models show that weekend television and video gaming are significantly associated with the number of sunburns one had in the past year (incident rate ratio = 1.008, z = 2.73), and weekend recreational computer use is significantly associated with the number of cans of soda with sugar one drank during the previous day (incident rate ratio = 1.003, z = 2.09). The use of English for the interview, age, parents’ educational attainment, household size, and gender are also found to be associated with different acculturation-related risky health behaviors investigated in this study.

This study is the first to analyze media consumption’s association with sunburn among Latino adolescents. Our findings indicate that among Latino adolescents in the United States, a large amount of media consumption can lead to risky health behaviors that were not common in Latin America. Therefore, parents should heed possible behavioral consequences when they decide on the amount of media exposure children have.

Social structural and cultural theories suggest that social stress induced from socio‐cultural status patterns varies across the world's cultures. The purpose of the study is to compare subjective social stress in connection with objective socio‐cultural status patterns among Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Rasulpur of Bangladesh.

This study was conducted in Rasulpur, Bangladesh. Preliminarily, 760 male arrack drinkers who were stressful in their socio‐cultural status patterns were selected by snowball process from the study area. Of the respondents, 391 arrack drinkers (109 Muslim, 103 Hindu, 89 Santal and 90 Oraon) were intensively interviewed by semi‐structural questionnaire to examine and compare the research purpose.

The results of Pearson's χ² test suggested that there were significant differences (p<0.01) in subjective social stress in connection with socio‐cultural status patterns, except income among the communities, among the ethnic communities. The results of Spearman bivariate correlation coefficients revealed that there were significant relationships (p<0.01 and p<0.05) between socio‐cultural status patterns and its social stress, except occupation and income among the communities studied.

Although the findings of the study have been successful in understanding differences in social stress in the context of socio‐cultural status patterns among the Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Rasulpur, Bangladesh, further empirical research is needed on how personality factor, familial and community coping and social support from social service system influence the differences in subjective social stress associated with socio‐cultural status patterns among the communities. In spite of the limitations, the findings may provide valuable information for cross‐cultural social health policy and programs to manage the problem.

This paper is original in linking its theory, policy and practice to reduce subjective social stress in the context of socio‐cultural variations among the Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Bangladesh.

This chapter will initially review some health care system issues with a focus on the US health care system. It will then review some of the sociological literature about race/ethnicity, immigration, socioeconomic status (SES) and gender and how these factors link to health and health care. In addition, the chapter will serve as an introduction to the volume and will briefly review the contents of the other sections and chapters in this volume.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the explanatory role of negative affect in the relation between subjective social status and anxiety/depressive disorders, suicidality symptoms, and disruption in life domains (i.e. disability; work/school, social life, and family life/home responsibilities) among Latinos seeking health services at a primary healthcare facility.

An experiment was designed using participants including 205 adult Latinos (M_age=39.2; SD=11.4) with annual incomes of less than $30,000. The sample was mostly female (85.9 percent) with a majority (98.5 percent) indicating Spanish as their first language.

Results indicated that subjective social status was indirectly related to the mental health variables through negative affect. Notably, these observed effects were evident above and beyond the variance accounted for by gender, age, marital status, educational status, employment status, and number of years in the USA.

The present findings suggest that there is merit in focusing further scientific attention on the interplay between subjective social status and negative affect to better understand and possibly intervene to reduce anxiety/depressive vulnerability and disability among Latinos in primary care settings.

The current study sheds light on the relationship between social status and negative affect in the Latino population. Elucidating mental health in a minority population such as the Latino population provides insight into the mental health needs among minorities that have yet to be addressed.

In this chapter, we analyze and reflect on how our cultural identities and educational experiences as international students who pursued a doctoral degree in the United States affected and influenced our teaching philosophy and praxis as professors and educators. In this sense, we examine how our cultural identities and experiences help us define and shape our teaching praxis in the contexts in which we teach. We both are professors of color – Latino and Latino-Japanese – who graduated from doctoral programs in the United States. Currently, we work and serve culturally and linguistically diverse students, including first-generation students, in public higher education settings in Chile and the United States. We used a collection of narratives to delve into the significance of these events in our praxis. As theoretical lenses, we analyze these narratives using cultural identity and the reflecting teacher to examine our practices and identities as educators. We both conclude that our reflections, experiences, and cultural identities have been instrumental in the process of developing a professional identity that guides our teaching praxis in ways that are critical and social justice oriented.