Understanding Normative Influence of Place: A Multilevel Approach to Promoting Latinas' Cervical Cancer Prevention Behaviors in Urban Ethnic Communities

Residential neighborhood is the very type of environment where everyday life is most keenly experienced. The past decade has seen a drastic demographic shift in the United States, posing a demanding challenge on existing scholarship that theorizes the effects of neighborhood on many aspects of people’s lives, including health. Normative influence is widely recognized as one crucial social process through which environment impacts health-related behaviors. Despite the critical role of information sources in the formation of normative perceptions and subsequent behaviors, the mechanisms that link people’s social, cultural, and physical environment with normative influences remain understudied. The current study investigates the importance of place as a larger context of everyday life wherein normative influences on health are formed. Specifically, we examine the critical communication processes through which normative perceptions about Latinas’ cervical cancer preventive behaviors are shaped in urban residential neighborhoods. From April 2012 to December 2013, 1655 Latinas aged 21-50 and living in Los Angeles County participated in a quantitative survey on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding cervical cancer. In this presentation, we will explore the roles of Latinas’ connections to their indigenous network of communication resources as an intervening process between neighborhood structural conditions and normative perceptions about cervical cancer prevention; and how such connections might impact more proximate health communication outcomes (e.g., interpersonal discussion about health, attention to information about Pap test in the media, etc.). Implications for norm-based campaigns and programs that address health disparities in local multiethnic communities will also be discussed.