NEWS

School of Social Work receives grant to help prevent violence in Hispanic youth

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work has received a three-year grant of about $830,000 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a program to prevent aggression, violence and substance abuse among Hispanic youth in North Carolina.

The program, "Promoting Biculturalism to Prevent Youth Violence," is designed to help North Carolina schools aid Hispanic students and their families. Drs. Paul Smokowski and Mimi Chapman, assistant professors of social work, will lead the project.

North Carolina has the nation’s fastest-growing Hispanic population, which is faced with unique issues related to adapting to American culture. Research has shown that the process poses particular risks for adolescents.

According to studies conducted by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Education, higher percentages of male Hispanic youths carry weapons to school, engage in physical fights on school property and skip school because of feeling unsafe as compared to their black and white classmates. In a 1999 U.S. Department of Education report, 12 percent of Hispanic students reported being targets of hate-related words, and 36 percent of Hispanic students were exposed to hate-related graffiti. Young Hispanic males also were reported to have the highest exposure to street gangs.

Hispanic females, on the other hand, are at high risk for turning their aggression inward. A CDC study found that more than a quarter of young Hispanic women reported seriously considering suicide, double the percentage reported by boys and girls of any other racial or ethnic group.

Alcohol abuse is also a concern for Hispanic adolescents.

"The change has been so rapid, but we have not fully anticipated what supports need to be in place to cope with it," said Smokowski. "We hope this work will help North Carolina schools to effectively address the needs of their Latino students."

The project will involve three phases. First, researchers will conduct in-depth life history interviews with Hispanic adolescents and their families to learn how risk and protective factors in the acculturation process affect youth violence and suicide rates.

The second phase will be using that information to create a program to prevent violence and suicide, geared to Hispanic adolescents. The final phase will be to collaborate with schools to pilot the new program among Hispanic adolescents from rural and urban counties in North Carolina.

"Research on bicultural prevention programs showed encouraging results during the 1980s, but these programs weren’t extended and disseminated," said Smokowski. "Today, supporting Latino youth has grown to be more important and more challenging. We believe that this prevention approach has great promise, and we are optimistic that we can intervene in the acculturation process to really help these families."

The project’s clinical supervisor will be Martica Bacallao, a doctoral student at the School of Social Work. The project’s first phase will be launched during the 2003-2004 academic year.

Chapman, Smokowski and Bacallao will enlist the help of bilingual master of social work students throughout the project.

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Note: Contact Smokowski at (919) 843-8281 or smokowski@email.unc.edu

School of Social Work contact: Mary Beth Hernandez, (919) 962-6469
News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415