Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) report greater alcohol use in comparison to their heterosexual counterparts. Prior research has found that elevated alcohol use among SGMY can be explained by minority stress experiences. Sexual identity outness may be another factor that drives alcohol use among SGMY, given that outness is associated with alcohol use among older sexual and gender minority samples. We examined how patterns of sexual identity outness were associated with lifetime alcohol use, past-30-day alcohol use, and past-30-day heavy episodic drinking. Data were drawn from the LGBTQ National Teen Survey (N = 8884). Participants were SGMY aged 13 to 17 (mean age = 15.59) years living in the US. Latent class analysis was used to identify sexual identity outness patterns. Multinomial regressions were used to examine the probability of class membership by alcohol use. Six outness classes were identified: out to all but teachers (n = 1033), out to siblings and peers (n = 1808), out to siblings and LGBTQ+ peers (n = 1707), out to LGBTQ+ peers (n = 1376), mostly not out (n = 1653), and very much not out (n = 1307). SGMY in classes characterized by greater outness to peers, friends, and family had greater odds of lifetime alcohol use compared with SGMY in classes characterized by lower outness. These findings suggest that SGMY with greater sexual identity outness may be a target for alcohol use prevention programming. Differences in sexual identity outness may be explained by minority stress factors.
It was proposed that emotional eating is a critical factor to address early in a behavioral obesity treatment for women to improve their long-term weight-loss, which has been problematic. Poor body image/body satisfaction is a likely predictor of emotional eating. Possible social cognitive theory-based mediators of the body satisfaction-emotional eating relationship having treatment implications include disturbed mood and self-efficacy for controlled eating. Women with obesity volunteered for a community-based weight loss program. After confirming salience of disturbed mood and self-efficacy for controlling one's eating as mediators of the body satisfaction-emotional eating relationship at baseline, a 3-month protocol emphasizing exercise and targeting those mediators through a focus on self-regulation was developed and administered to the treatment group (n = 86). The control group (n = 51) received matched time in typical, educationally based weight-loss processes. Improvements in body satisfaction, emotional eating, disturbed mood, and self-efficacy for controlled eating from baseline-month 3 were each significantly greater in the treatment group. Further analysis of the treatment group found that changes in disturbed mood and self-efficacy completely mediated the body satisfaction change-emotional eating change relationship and neither age nor race (White/Black) were significant moderators. Improvement in emotional eating from baseline-month 3 significantly predicted lost weight over both 3 months and with changes incorporating a 6-month follow up. Findings confirmed the importance of addressing the relationship between body satisfaction and emotional eating over the critical initial months of a behavioral obesity treatment for women through targeting improvements in mood and controlled eating-related self-efficacy.
The diet quality of US adults is poor and cross-sectional analyses suggest self-perception of healthful dietary intake may be overestimated. This analysis assessed the concordance between calculated and perceived diet quality and changes in diet quality among adults seeking weight loss and enrolled in a 12-month randomized behavioral trial. Healthy Eating Index-2015 diet quality (HEI) was calculated from self-administered 24-hour recalls. Perceived diet quality (PDQ) was measured on a 100-point scale. Higher scores indicate better diet quality. Concordance was assessed using the concordance correlation coefficient and Bland-Altman plots. The one hundred and five participants with complete dietary data were mostly female and white. There was good agreement between HEI and PDQ scores at 12 months for less than a third of participants. Most of the disagreement arose from PDQ scores being higher than HEI scores. Even fewer participants had good agreement between HEI changes and PDQ changes. Participants perceived greater improvement in diet quality than indicated by HEI score changes. Concordance was low at 12 months and for change in diet quality. Despite the diet quality of adults seeking weight loss being suboptimal and not improving, many perceived their diet quality and diet quality improvements as better than calculated. Future studies might explore the effect of misperceptions on weight loss outcomes.
Debilitating fatigue is common in people living with kidney disease and often persists after a kidney transplant. Current understanding of fatigue is centered around pathophysiological processes. Little is known about the role of cognitive and behavioral factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the contribution of these factors to fatigue among kidney transplant recipients (KTRs). A cross-sectional study of 174 adult KTRs who completed online measures of fatigue, distress, illness perceptions, and cognitive and behavioral responses to fatigue. Sociodemographic and illness-related information was also collected. 63.2% of KTRs experienced clinically significant fatigue. Sociodemographic and clinical factors explained 16.1% and 31.2% of the variance in the fatigue severity and fatigue impairment, respectively, increasing by 28% and 26.8% after adding distress. In adjusted models, all the cognitive and behavioral factors except for illness perceptions were positively associated with increased fatigue-related impairment, but not severity. Embarrassment avoidance emerged as a key cognition. In conclusion, fatigue is common following kidney transplantation and associated with distress and cognitive and behavioral responses to symptoms, particularly embarrassment avoidance. Given the commonality and impact of fatigue in KTRs, treatment is a clinical need. Psychological interventions targeting distress and specific beliefs and behaviors related to fatigue may be beneficial.
We investigated health, economic, and social disparities among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and sexually diverse adults, 18 years and older. Analyzing 2011-2019 Washington State Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (N = 109,527), we estimated and compared the prevalence rates of background characteristics, economic and social indicators, health outcomes, chronic conditions, health care access, health behaviors, and preventive care by gender and sexual identity. Sexual minority adults reported heightened risks of poor general health, physical and mental health, disability, subjective cognitive decline, and financial barriers to health care, compared with their straight counterparts. Economic disparities and disability were evident for lesbians and both bisexual adult women and men. We found higher rates of smoking and excessive drinking among lesbians and bisexual women, and higher rates of smoking and living alone among gay men. Sexually diverse adults experience disparities in health care access. This study is one of the first to identify disparities among sexually diverse populations, in addition to lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. More research is required to understand the mechanisms of disparities within these groups to address their distinct intervention needs.
Studies examining the effects of discrimination on emotional well-being have often overlooked (a) differential effects of both everyday and lifetime discrimination and (b) how both types of discrimination may exacerbate stressor-related affect-even when daily stressors are unrelated to discrimination. The current study examined the effects of daily stressors not attributed to discrimination (i.e., nondiscrimination-related daily stressors) on daily negative and positive affect in the presence of either form of discrimination (everyday and lifetime). Participants who completed the second wave of the Survey of Midlife Development in the US (MIDUS-II) and the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE-II) answered questionnaires about everyday and lifetime discrimination. Later, they completed daily phone interviews across 8 consecutive days, asking about the nondiscrimination-related daily stressors and the positive and negative affect they had experienced that day. Multilevel model analyses revealed that everyday discrimination was associated with decreased daily positive affect and lifetime discrimination was associated with increased daily negative affect. Moreover, higher frequency of everyday discrimination exacerbated the within-person effects of nondiscriminatory daily stressors on negative affect. Results underscore the importance of considering both independent and synergistic effects of discrimination on daily emotional well-being.
Youth between the ages of 13 and 24 account for over 20% of new HIV diagnoses in the United States but are the least likely age group to be HIV tested in healthcare settings including the emergency department. This is in part due to the fact that almost 50% of youth decline testing when offered. We elucidated youth patients' perspectives on barriers to and facilitators of routine HIV testing of youth in an urban emergency department setting. Thirty-seven patients aged 13-24 years were recruited from the pediatric and adult emergency departments at a high-volume hospital in New York City from August 2019 to March 2020. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with all participants. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were coded using an inductive thematic analysis approach. Youths' main reasons for declining HIV testing when offered included low risk perception, privacy concerns, HIV-related stigma, and low levels of HIV-related knowledge. Participants' responses suggested that HIV educational materials provided when testing is offered may be insufficient. Participants recommended providing additional HIV education and better incorporating HIV testing into the emergency department routine to increase testing among youth. Efforts are needed to help youth recognize their own HIV risk and increase their HIV-related knowledge. This may be accomplished by providing youth with additional educational materials on HIV, possibly via tablet-based interventions or other methods that may enhance privacy, combined with discussions with healthcare providers. Such efforts may help increase HIV testing acceptance among youth seen in the emergency department.
Black and Latinx transgender women in the United States (U.S.) are at disproportionately high risk for HIV. Although HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces the risk of HIV infection, uptake and persistence (i.e., ability to continue taking PrEP over time) can be a challenge for Black and Latinx transgender women due to myriad social and structural forces. In this qualitative study, we present unique data on the facilitators of PrEP persistence from Black and Latinx transgender women who initiated PrEP and exhibited varying levels of persistence during a demonstration project in Southern California. PrEP persistence was assessed by collecting quantitative intracellular tenofovir-diphosphate (TFV-DP) levels on dried blood spot (DBS) samples collected at weeks 12 and 48. Informed by the socioecological framework, we conducted and analyzed interviews using qualitative content analysis to determine themes on the facilitators of PrEP persistence. Individual-level facilitators included the use of reminders, having high individual-level HIV risk perception, feeling empowered to take PrEP, and reporting having improved peace of mind and mental health because of taking PrEP. Interpersonal/Community-level facilitators included feeling motivation to prevent HIV in the community, motivation to prevent HIV in the context of sex work, and having high community-level risk perception. Structural-level facilitators included having positive experiences in affirming healthcare settings and having PrEP visits combined with other gender-related healthcare visits. Interventions aiming to increase PrEP uptake and persistence among Black and Latinx transgender women in the U.S. should harness the multiple levels of support exhibited by those who were able to start and persist on PrEP in the face of the myriad social and structural barriers.

