The candidate, Dr. Paul Smokowski, is an Assistant Professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's (UNC-CH) School of Social Work. He has served as Co-Principal Investigator on youth violence research grants funded by NIDA and the CDC. His career goals are as follows; (1) establish himself as an interdisciplinary public health scholar with a national recognition for research on Latino adolescent health and mental health, (2) become a rigorous mixed-methods researcher, and (3) secure RO1 funding for a multi-state study of acculturation and health behaviors in Latino adolescents. The candidate's research career development plan includes receiving mentoring from Professors Mark Fraser, a nationally known scholar on risk and resilience in children and adolescents, Carol Runyan, a leading public health researcher on injury control, and Flavio Marsiglia, an expert on acculturation and adolescent substance use. He will take advanced coursework in the UNC-CH School of Public Health, focusing on adolescent health and research methodology. He will also become a core member of UNC-CH's Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC). The training environment draws resources from UNC-CH's School of Public Health, School of Social Work, IPRC, and Arizona State University's Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Consortium.
The aim of the proposed investigation is to study acculturation, health protection, and health risk behavior in Latino adolescents residing in North Carolina and Arizona. This investigation will map modifiable risk factors that lead Latino adolescents to engage in negative health behaviors such as alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, aggressive behavior, and suicide. Using a prospective, longitudinal design, 300 Latino adolescents (150 in NC, and 150 in AZ) will be assessed 4 times over 3 years. Mixed-methods analyses using HLM growth curve modeling, and qualitative interview data will examine how acculturation processes and health behaviors evolve over time in different environmental settings.
