Gonzalez-Guarda Submits Proposal for Latinx, COVID-19 Study

Kudos to Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda, associate professor, and her entire team for submitting the proposal entitled: "SER Hispano during COVID-19: Salud/Health, Estres/Stress, and Resiliencia/Resilience (SER) Among Latinx Immigrants During the COVID-19 Pandemic." Latinx is a gender-inclusive term for Hispanic/Latino people. 

The submission is in response to the PA-18-935 "Urgent Supplement for Competitive Revision to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements" and requests funding for a one-year period with a start date of June 1, 2020. 

This study will examine the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on prevention behaviors, help seeking and health among young adult Latinx immigrants in the U.S. The findings from this study can inform interventions addressing emerging health disparities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic in this population.

Latinx immigrants living in the U.S. appear to be proportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Latinx immigrants experience a unique confluence of inequities in social and environmental conditions (e.g., socioeconomic status, employment opportunities, household composition, documentation status) and lack of access to culturally and linguistically responsive health care. These factors may increase the Latinx immigrant community’s exposure to COVID-19 and interfere with their ability to seek social and medical help when needed. Additionally, the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to interact with the stress of being a Latinx immigrant in the U.S. and contribute to declining health. However, little is known about the impact of COVID-19 on Latinx immigrant health and the mechanisms linking the COVID-19 pandemic, acculturation stress, resilience and health outcomes among Latinx immigrants.

The proposed mixed method study will add new COVID-19 behavioral survey and qualitative data to an existing longitudinal study of Latinx immigrants in North Carolina (N= 389) which is examining the influence of acculturation stress and resilience on the substance abuse, intimate partner violence, HIV risk and depression syndemic, and biological stress among young adult Latinx immigrants over time. The supplement will investigate the effects of risk and protective factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic on prevention behaviors, help seeking and deteriorating (or resilient) health. More specifically, we aim to:

1. Examine and characterize young adult Latinx immigrants’ experience with COVID-19 risk (i.e., social determinants of health such as occupation, misinformation, access to care; household environment; pandemic stress), protective factors (e.g., familismo, social support, coping strategies) and recommended prevention behaviors (e.g., social distancing, disinfecting surfaces, staying home when sick), COVID-19 testing when indicated, help-seeking (i.e., social and health care utilization), and outcomes (symptoms & diagnosis) 

2. Test the extent of the cumulative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on acculturation stress, protective factors, and mental or physical health

3. To identify characteristics of the most vulnerable Latinx immigrants by testing predictors of clinically significant deterioration (or resilience) in mental or physical health (syndemic conditions, biological stress and COVID-19 outcomes).

Culturally specific measures for COVID-19, acculturation stress and protective factors will be used to assess for individual, family, community and societal risk and protective factors and health outcomes. Various descriptive, univariate and multivariate statistics, including latent growth curve modeling, will be used to address Aims 1 -3, and qualitative data will be integrated with quantitative data using joint data displays. The findings from this study have the potential to identify risk and protective factors for the decay in health among Latinx immigrants and contribute to COVID-19 intervention strategies addressing health disparities.