Michelle Y. Martin Romero

University of North Carolina at Greensboro | UNCG · Department of Public Health Education

Background Essential workers across multiple industries faced a disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The effects were especially severe for agricultural and food processing workers, many of whom are members of the structurally vulnerable Latine community. Under current U.S. federal laws, children under 12...

Objectives: This qualitative investigation examined how Latinx/Hispanic youth experience cultural stressors, emotionally react to, and cope with these stressors within the family context. Method: Forty-five youth participated in six focus groups (51% female; 49% male; 0% nonbinary; Mage = 15.26; SD = 0.79). Results: Using reflexive thematic analysi...

Shift‐&‐persist (S&P) coping has been shown to buffer against the effects of discrimination on psychosocial functioning in racially and ethnically minoritized youth. However, existing measures of S&P refer broadly to coping with stress and are not specifically tailored to the type of stressor individuals are coping with (e.g., discrimination). The...

In the last decade, there has been a surge in research examining racial-ethnic socialization (RES) in Latinx families building upon a research base that has established Latinx culturally resilient processes. Our chapter brings together these lines of work and presents a model for understanding the protective processes of RES in Latinx families. We...

The present study explores the ways Black/African American emerging adult college students (ages 18–20) and their caregivers engage in racial-ethnic socialization via mobile communication technologies, within the context of a minority-serving 4 year university in the Southeastern US. Qualitative integrative analysis of focus groups ( N = 12 Black/A...

Parent-child conversations about race-related issues serve a protective function for minoritized families and are needed to help children of color thrive in the United States (Hughes et al., Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 51, 2016 and 1). Despite the difficulties that parents experience in having such conversations to prepare youth to...

Vicarious exposure to discrimination can result in multiple negative outcomes in youth. In this article, we offer a conceptual model that articulates the intersecting contextual factors and potential moderators for U.S. Latine youth's exposure to family‐level vicarious racism, and explore how that affects youth and family responses. We define and d...

Background Parent–child racial‐ethnic socialization conversations are an important tool to cultivate a sense of pride and equip youth to deal with discrimination. However, conversations about preparation for racial bias can be particularly difficult for parents to deliver effectively. Little research has been done that illuminates the types of chal...

Indian Americans are an under researched population within the racial-ethnic socialization (RES) literature, and very little is known about how Indian American immigrant families navigate these conversations. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study explored parent and youth perspectives of RES processes in Indian American families. A...

Objective: This study expands the literature on risk taking among college students by exploring anti-racism action as a form of positive risk taking. Participants: 346 Black (64%) and Latinx (36%) college students (85% female) ages 18-27 years (M = 18.75, SD = 1.31). Methods: Participants responded to questionnaires on anti-racism action, health-ri...

This study aims to better understand how racially/ethnically minoritized youth exhibit adaptive psychological functioning (less anxiety) and health behaviors (better sleep and less binge drinking) in the context of discrimination, ethnic-racial identity and coping. Among 364 minoritized emerging adults (Mage = 18.79, 85.2% female), we utilized high...

This paper tested whether shift-&-persist coping, or coping involving the combination of cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and optimism (Chen & Miller, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2012, 7, 135), attenuates the risks presented by economic hardship and ethnic discrimination for change in depressive symptoms from 9th to 12th grade, in a sa...

Racial-ethnic inequity is deeply entrenched in U.S. social systems, yet adolescents’ voices and understanding around inequity are not often directly examined. The current qualitative study uses focus group data from African American ( n = 21), Chinese- ( n = 17), Indian- ( n = 13), and Mexican- ( n = 17) origin adolescents ( M age = 12.93 years; SD...

Critical civic engagement (CCE) refers to interpersonal, community, and political actions to combat and cope with racial inequity. While discrimination and identity are well-known drivers of civic engagement, it is less well-known how parental preparation for bias socialization, which teaches Black youth how to cope with unequal social systems, wor...

Objectives: Based on the conceptual overlap between shift-&-persist (S&P) and culturally based strategies (critical civic engagement [CCE] and spiritually based coping), this study tests whether associations between these three previously disparate strategies are attributable to the existence of a higher-order coping construct: culturally informed...

Coping in the context of racial-ethnic discrimination is often framed as an individualistic process, where the focus is on how the individual deals with the racialized stressor to mitigate its negative effects. However, individuals exist within social contexts including the family and coping processes may operate interdependently as well. Further,...

Youth are frequently involved in preparing meals for themselves and family members. Latinx youth may be more likely to be involved in food preparation compared to youth from other ethnic backgrounds. Involvement in food preparation has been linked to various positive health outcomes, such as better diet quality and higher self-esteem. However, litt...

Shift-&-persist is a coping strategy that has been shown to lead to positive health outcomes in low-SES youth but has not yet been examined with respect to psychological health. This study tests whether the shift-&-persist coping strategy works in tandem with ethnic-racial identity to protect against depressive symptoms in the face of two uncontrol...

Objective: To explore the perceived environmental enablers for and barriers to healthy eating among rural Salvadoran youth. Methods: A photovoice activity was implemented at a grade school located in a rural region of northeastern El Salvador. Results: Nine female and 8 male youth aged 8-12 years participated. A total of 116 photos were genera...