The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #43602

Tod Mijanovich, MPA and Beth Weitzman, PhD. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University, Center for Health and Public Service Research, 726 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003, 212-998-7467, tod.mijanovich@nyu.edu

The presentation will analyze how the events of September 11, 2001, affected teenagers’ feelings of safety and well-being, and will describe the factors most strongly related to those feelings. Potential predictors of feelings of safety will be analyzed in a multivariate context, and will include time elapsed since Sept. 11, distance from New York, and urbanicity, as well as local school and neighborhood conditions, demographics, parents’ tolerance for fighting, and other factors predictive of safety before the attack. Data will be drawn from the Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY), a telephone household survey of parents and youth age 10-18. The survey is part of the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Urban Health Initiative (UHI), a ten-year effort to improve the health and safety of youth in disadvantaged U.S. cities. The SAY sample comprises parent and teen respondents drawn from across the country, with oversamples in 15 distressed U.S. cities. More than 10,000 households were interviewed at baseline (1998-9), with a similar number interviewed between September 2001 and June 2002. Preliminary analysis of the fall 2001 data suggests that feelings of unsafety are somewhat more prevalent throughout the country in 2001 compared with 1998-9, and that distance from New York is predictive of feelings of unsafety, moreso than urbanicity of residence or time elapsed since September 11. However, local conditions seem to be far more important in determining teenagers’ feelings of safety than factors related to the World Trade Center attacks, especially in distressed cities.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Identify major predictors of teenagers' feelings of safety and well-being.
• Compare and rank the relative "strength" of individual-level, family-level, neighborhood-level, school-based, and locational predictors of feelings of safety and well-being.
• Describe differences between the mechanisms that appear to affect adolescent feelings of safety and well-being at school vs. more generally.

Keywords: Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Safety

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.