Katharina Buczek
“However, much less attention is paid to the inherent strengths they possess and the ways those strengths may be leveraged to advance health equity. In this study, we wanted to shift the paradigm in public health beyond the traditional focus on deficits to one that concentrates on resource building.”
In turn, the research team examined data pulled from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which included nearly three thousand and five hundred U.S. high school students with an average age of 16 years old. These teens were enrolled in 1994 and followed for over two decades.
Nearly half of the study participants were girls. 67% of the teens were White, 15% were Black, 11% were Latino, and 6% self-reported their race as either Asian, Native American, or “other.”
Then, over 20 years, data on the teens’ health and well-being was periodically collected– with the most recent data collection occurring in 2018 when the participants’ average age was 38.
In this study, the team used initial survey responses– completed when the participants were teenagers– to identify five mental health assets that are linked to a better cardiometabolic health outcome. These included happiness, self-esteem, optimism, feeling loved, and a sense of belonging.
This data was also cross-referenced with three decades of recorded health data to ascertain whether teenagers who had more positive assets had a higher likelihood of maintaining strong cardiometabolic health during adulthood.
Then, to examine cardiometabolic health, the research team reviewed health data for seven metabolic and cardiovascular disease risk factors– which were collected when the participants visited clinics during their late twenties and thirties.
These factors included measures such as “good” cholesterol– also known as high-density lipoprotein (HDL)– as well as non-HDL cholesterol, diastolic blood pressure, blood sugar, body mass index (BMI), inflammation, and body fat.
This analysis revealed that a whopping 55% of youth had zero or one positive mental health asset. 29% had two to three; meanwhile, just 16% had four to five.
In turn, only 12% of the participants maintained strong cardiometabolic health over time– with white youth having a stronger likelihood of maintaining good health later in life as opposed to Latino or Black youth.
Although, the teens who had four to five positive mental health assets were found to be 69% more likely to maintain strong cardiometabolic health during young adulthood.
