Substance Use, Social Networks, and the Geography of Urban Adolescents

Abstract

This article demonstrates a research strategy and prevention methodology for substance using urban youth that incorporates individual, social, and geographical parameters to systematically understand the ecology of risk and protection for urban youth. The primary goal of this study was to describe and analyze substance using and nonusing urban adolescents’ social networks; risky and protective settings where they socialize; and the relationship to health outcomes such as substance use, depression, and stress. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) derived spatial relationships and analyses between the specific locations where the teens are active, their subjective ratings of these locations, and objective environmental risk data. These social network and GIS data were merged to form a detailed description and analysis of the social ecology of urban adolescent substance use. A case study was constructed to illustrate the methodology of creating a three-dimentional ecological profile that helps explain these relationships and provides preventive applications. Linear distances were computed between the homes of the users and the risky and safe places that they identified. On average, the distance between users’ homes and their identified safe places was three times the distance between their homes and their identified risky places. This study provides support for understanding urban adolescent substance use through the detailed and multiple dimensional analysis of teens’ social ecologies.

• Urban adolescents
• Substance use
• Social network
• Social ecology
• Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Prevention
• Risk processes
• Protective processes
• Natural helping systems
• Transdisciplinary

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These data begin to illustrate that the ecological settings of urban adolescents’ lives can inform prevention by recognizing the significant connections between teen's co-participants of their lives (social network members) and the everyday settings in which their behaviors are expressed (risky, neutral, and protective locations).

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These data begin to illustrate that the ecological settings of urban adolescents’ lives can inform prevention by recognizing the significant connections between teen's co-participants of their lives (social network members) and the everyday settings in which their behaviors are expressed (risky, neutral, and protective locations).

Notes

¹An example of this method is described in the second paragraph of the Prevention Implication section below

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Mason

Michael Mason, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Georgetown University Medical Center. His interests include the understanding of the social ecologies of urban adolescents and the development of substance abuse prevention interventions. He has published widely and also provides child, adolescent, and family clinical services through the Department of Psychiatry's outpatient practice. He received his doctorate in Counseling from the Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon in 1992 and completed a NIMH funded postdoctoral research fellowship at Johns Hopkins, School of Public Health, in 1996.

Ivan Cheung

Ivan Cheung, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the George Washington University. His interests include the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in environmental, social, and public health research. He received his doctorate in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1998.

Leslie Walker

Leslie R. Walker, M.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, and Director of Adolescent Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. Her research interests include, adolescent depression, health care transition in primary care health care services, evaluating the antecedents of adolescent risk behaviors, and adolescent pregnancy prevention. She has presented and published articles in the area of adolescent pregnancy prevention and adolescent depression and adolescent health care services. She received her medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1990 and completed her Adolescent Medicine fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco in 1996.