The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institute of Health, awarded Yijie Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, and her team a five-year, $2,108,204 grant to investigate adolescents’ experiences of multiple forms of discrimination and its implication for substance use. 

“Discrimination is an unfortunate, common experience for teenagers in a diverse society like the U.S., especially for marginalized youth who tend to be the target of such experience and who have poorer developmental outcomes across domains,” Wang said. “However, we currently know little how it can take on multiple forms, or the developmental implications of the complex experience of discrimination. This project seeks to fill this gap in the literature.”

Wang and her team will investigate adolescents’ experiences of multiple forms of discrimination based on factors such as ethnicity/race, country of origin, sexual orientation and weight; and its implication for substance use based on both self-reports and objective measures such as hair sample metabolites.

For the full story, visit socialscience.msu.edu