The Associations Between Childhood Adversity and Health Behaviors Among Latine Youth: Exploring Interpersonal and Sociocultural Risk and Protective Factors

There is a consistent link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and chronic illnesses in adulthood. Yet, our understanding of the impact of ACEs on pediatric health behaviors is limited by the reliance on primarily White adult samples and study of a narrow scope of health behaviors. Despite evidence indicating Hispanic/Latine youth report heightened susceptibility to experiencing ACEs, protective and risk factors related to the experience of ACEs and health behaviors remains ill-defined in this population. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether exposure to ACEs was related to health behavior engagement among Hispanic/Latine youth. A secondary aim was to examine the moderating roles of caregiver-child relationship quality, parental acculturative stress, and child acculturation status on the link between child ACE exposures and child health behavior. Participants (N=87 caregivers of Hispanic/Latine children) completed measures of caregiver-child relationship quality and parental acculturative stress, and their child’s ACE exposure, child’s health behaviors (sleep disturbances and physical activity), and child’s acculturation status. Notably, the child acculturation status measure demonstrated low internal consistency, thus it was not included in the analyses as initially intended. Multiple linear regressions with moderation analyses revealed that child ACE exposures were independently related to child sleep disturbances, however when accounting for the effect of parental acculturative stress, caregiver-child conflict and/or age at which the child’s first ACE occurred, child ACE exposure no longer remained as a significant predictor of child sleep disturbances. However, parental acculturative stress was found to moderate the relationship between child ACE exposure and child sleep disturbances, whereby average to high levels of parental acculturative stress shared a significant positive relationship between child ACE exposures and child sleep disturbances while the relationship between child ACE exposures and child sleep disturbances at low levels of parental acculturative stress was not significant. Caregiver-child relationship quality was negatively associated with child sleep disturbances but did not moderate the relationship between child ACE exposure and child sleep disturbances. Child ACE exposures were not found to be significantly associated with child physical activity. Last, neither caregiver-child relationship quality nor parental acculturative stress were related to child physical activity and did not moderate the relationship between child ACE exposures and child physical activity. Our findings highlight the significance of addressing parental acculturative stress when developing sleep interventions for Hispanic/Latine youth. Future research should also investigate other commonly studied biopsychosocial factors to identify additional potential prevention targets within this population, especially when aiming to support optimal physical activity among this at-risk group.