Racial disparities in school discipline: Examining the complex interactions between neurobiological, environmental, and school-based determinants of health within the ABCD Study

Project Summary/Abstract Educational attainment is a health disparities issue. School dropout is one of the strongest predictors of health disparities across the lifespan, and improving educational outcomes has the potential to save eight times more lives than medical advances. Dropping out of school is the culmination of a longer process of school disengagement that starts much earlier in development. Fortunately, school disengagement is a modifiable health determinant. However, a clearer understanding of the complex interactions among multiple, upstream risk factors for school disengagement is needed to guide the development and evaluation of school-based programming aimed at reducing distal health disparities. Exclusionary disciplinary practices (EDPs) in schools, such as detentions and suspensions, are consistently associated with school disengagement. They are also disproportionately used against students of color, which may lead to perceived discrimination and further school disengagement, underscoring the notion that EDPs can be a form of race-based trauma. Due to structural and institutional inequities, minority youth are also at increased risk for experiencing childhood adversity, and mounting evidence suggests that experiencing childhood adversity lowers tolerance to coping with later stressors. Thus, experiencing an EDP may be particularly harmful among minority youth previously exposed to childhood adversity. Neurobiological functioning associated with childhood adversity may partially explain this process. Guided by theories of neurobiological and minority stress, the specific research aims of the proposed project include: 1) Determining whether discrimination mediates the associations between EDPs and school disengagement; 2) Examining whether childhood adversity moderates the associations between EDPs, discrimination, and school disengagement; 3) Examining whether neurobiological factors associated with childhood adversity moderate the associations between EDPs, discrimination, and school disengagement; and 4) Exploring how COVID-19 and remote-learning environments influenced the associations between EDPs, discrimination, and school disengagement. This K01 proposal will be achieved by leveraging data from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a ten-year longitudinal study examining brain development and child health among 11,878 youth within the United States. To build upon my expertise in developmental psychopathology, I require advanced training in (1) neurobiological sciences applied to childhood adversity; (2) quantitative analyses related to longitudinal, finite mixture modeling; (3) school-based determinants of health and their associations with minority health and health disparities; (4) addressing social and structural inequities within clinical, research, and academic settings; and (5) achieving scientific independence as a health-disparities researcher. This project complements my previous training as a clinical psychologist and will enable me to pursue a future line of independent, health disparities research using a neurobiological, trauma-informed, school-based framework.