Childhood maltreatment was found to be associated across categories of gambling outcomes, according to research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Analysts examined data from 13,291 young adults ages 18–26 self-identifying as European American or African American who participated in Wave III of the restricted-use National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.
They found associations between gambling and childhood maltreatment, physical discipline and alcohol use. Childhood neglect was also associated with gambling, with African Americans at higher risk, as was cannabis use.
“Clinicians and treatment providers should query about maltreatment history as part of their assessment, as problem gamblers are more likely to have a history of childhood maltreatment,” wrote co-authors Renee Cunningham-Williams, associate professor at the Brown School and Manik Ahuja, a post-doctoral researcher.
“Our results revealed that African Americans who were current users of cannabis were significantly more likely to gamble across multiple gambling types than European Americans,” they wrote. “We recommend tailored cannabis use prevention programs that address the needs of African American adolescents and young adults.”
The paper was published Oct. 16 in the Journal of Substance Abuse and Alcoholism.
Ahuja will be presenting the work at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research January 16-20 in San Francisco.
A Washington University in St. Louis interdisciplinary initiative has sparked a wave of faculty research and the publication of a new book examining the incidence of cancer among low-income women of color in St. Louis and the Metro East communities of Illinois, including East St. Louis.
Published in January by Lexington Books, the interdisciplinary volume is titled “Poverty and Place: Cancer Prevention among Low-Income Women of Color.”
The book examines ways in which cancer health disparities exist due to class and context inequities even in the most advanced society of the world. It demonstrates the importance of place and the historical inequity in socio-environmental settings that have contributed to marked health disparities.
It is co-authored by current and former faculty and staff from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Brown School and Arts & Sciences.
Contributors include Will Ross, MD, associate dean for diversity programs at the School of Medicine, professor of medicine and the newly named principal officer for Community Partnerships; Vetta Sanders Thompson, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Brown School; Carol Camp Yeakey, the Marshall S. Snow Professor in Arts & Sciences; Anjanette Wells, a former Brown School faculty member at the University of Cincinnati; and Sheri Notaro, associate dean for graduate student affairs and director of the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship Program in the Graduate School.
Provost Holden Thorp wrote the foreward for the volume. The research is a product of the “Bring Your Own Idea” interdisciplinary faculty grant program that Thorp’s office launched in 2014. The companion volume will be published by Oxford University Press in late spring 2019.
The authors support a new model of community engagement that focuses on individuals in their broader ecological context. In so doing, they seek to advance the art and science of community engagement and collaboration, while disavowing the “parachute” model of research, policy and practice that reinforces and sustains the problems associated with the status quo.
The book concludes with broader national policy considerations in the face of the erosion of the social safety net for America’s citizenry.