3-019 - Understudied Populations in Puberty Research: New Insights

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A dramatic secular trend has occurred such that puberty now occurs at an earlier age compared to prior generations. There are racial disparities in this acceleration with Black and Latino youth beginning puberty earlier than their White counterparts. Black and Latino youth are experiencing earlier puberty, yet they are understudied. Because early puberty may result in a cascade of adverse outcomes in both adolescence and adulthood, a better understanding of the pubertal transition and factors that interaction with this transition within these populations is essential. This symposium fills a critical gap by examining puberty as a multimodal construct (e.g., replicating timing, extending to tempo and integrating relative pubertal timing) in Black and Latino youth to move the field toward a mechanistic understanding for how puberty exerts risk.



The first paper emphasizes the need to consider intersectionality when evaluating puberty-linked outcomes by examining the interaction of relative pubertal timing and social identities on disordered eating in Black youth. Paper 2 draws on new insights from public health research that has yet to be widely assimilated into developmental research by exploring the interaction of menarche and prior childhood maltreatment on clinically detected cervical human papillomavirus in primarily Black and Latino girls. Paper 3 evaluates whether early life exposures can explain the racial disparity in puberty among Mexican-American youth. Our discussant -- a well-known expert on the unique racial-ethnic experiences of youth -- will describe how the understanding of this complex, multi-faceted transition may be expanded through integrating race-ethnic related variables.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Psychophysiology

Chair

• Rona Carter, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Discussant

• Richard Lee, University of Minnesota

Individual Presentations

• Perceived pubertal timing and disordered eating: The importance of considering the social identities of Race and Gender - Presenting Author: Janelle L. Blazek, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Non-Presenting Author: Rona Carter, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Pubertal timing, childhood maltreatment, and cervical human papillomavirus infection in inner-city female adolescents - Presenting Author: Li Niu, Fordham University; Non-Presenting Author: Lindsay Till Hoyt, Fordham University; Non-Presenting Author: Anthony Salandy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Non-Presenting Author: Nicolas F. Schlecht, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center; Non-Presenting Author: Robert D. Burk, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Non-Presenting Author: Angela Diaz, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

• Early Life Exposures and Pubertal Trajectories among Mexican American Boys and Girls - Presenting Author: Julianna Deardorff, University of California, Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Jonathan W. Reeves, UC Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Megan Johnson, University of California - Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine Kogut, University of California, Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth A Shirtcliff, Iowa State University; Non-Presenting Author: Abbey Alkon, University of California, San Francisco; Non-Presenting Author: Ronald E Dahl, UC Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Brenda Eskenazi, University of California - Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Kimberly G Harley, UC Berkeley