EMBRace With Grandparents

Research on racial discrimination (RD) continues to show the debilitating toll on mental and physical health for adolescents throughout their developmental trajectory, particularly for Black Americans. While adolescents may employ emotion-focused behaviors (e.g., overeating, etc.) in-the-moment to reduce discriminatory distress, such risk-laden behaviors can result in later disparities in their overall health. While this link has been repeatedly established in the literature, racially-specific protective mechanisms (e.g., racial socialization; RS) have been shown to disrupt the pathway from discrimination to health-related outcomes in adolescents. Although informative, the literature on RS has yet to advance our understanding of ways to improve upon these protective processes in Black families. Thus, the proposed study will further our understanding by aiming to improve RS competency (e.g., skills and efficacy) among African American caregivers and youth (ages 10-14) in Detroit, Michigan through the Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace) intervention.

The EMBRace intervention facilitates spaces where Black caregivers strengthen and develop skills to be attentive to their adolescent's racial trauma while also reducing their own stress via racial coping knowledge and RS strategies. Parents and adolescents start each session by engaging in separate therapeutic sessions to process experiences of their Black identity. They will then join together for a family session that focuses on enhancing messages about racial pride, bias preparation, rationales behind promoting distrust, and why not engaging in RS practices may be detrimental to youth. EMBRace sessions will take place at the University of Michigan Detroit Center and community sites, and will be video recorded to improve upon the delivery of therapeutic techniques to the families we serve.

Approximately 90% of Black youth report facing or witnessing racial discrimination in their proximal (e.g., classroom) and virtual (e.g., social network) environments. The association between discrimination and negative mental health outcomes (e.g., more severe and higher rates of depression) has been repeatedly established in the literature. Moreover, discrimination impairs the way youth cope, and it is this compromised coping that is associated with negative psychological, academic, and health outcomes. Further, adolescent outcomes may lead to marked health complications and widening disparities in adulthood. Within adolescence, families can have a contributing role in the buffering or exacerbation of coping processes and behaviors to discriminatory experiences. The majority of Black families use racial socialization (RS)-or the verbal and nonverbal communication regarding racial matters-to facilitate coping with race. While RS has been shown to disrupt the trajectory from discrimination to negative psychological outcomes in some respects, it has also contributed to increased youth depressive and anxious symptoms given the wide variety of strategies observed in RS communication. Furthermore, less is known about the impact that grandparents have in the socialization process of their adolescent grandchildren, even though Black grandparents are more likely to rear their grandchildren compared to other races and given current trends. To address these gaps, the emergence of a new RS theory and accompanying clinical intervention seeks to investigate and improve upon this potentially protective cultural process by improving RS competency and enhancing coping processes. The Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST) postulates that caregivers' explicit and consistent delivery of psychoeducation-informed, skilled, and confident RS practices can reduce caregiver stress and subsequent psychological problems experienced by Black youth via greater coping self-efficacy and coping behaviors. The Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace) intervention is the application of RECAST and seeks to improve upon competent RS practices through therapeutic and empirically supported strategies. The use of culturally-relevant theory in clinical treatment is vital to Black youth's coping with specific (i.e., racial) stressors linked to long-term health and wellness outcomes. The empirical investigation of RECAST can also clarify whether aging caregivers (e.g., grandparents) develop the same competencies as other primary caregivers for an intergenerational exploration of RS practices. Thus, the goal of this study is to test the effectiveness of a unique culturally-relevant and family-based intervention developed to enhance RS competencies in Black caregivers and reduce negative psychological outcomes for adolescent children. Building on the preliminary data that I collected during the acceptability pilot testing of the EMBRace intervention in Philadelphia, the proposed study will test the mechanism of caregiver RS competency as a moderator of discrimination, coping self-efficacy, coping, and adolescent psychological outcomes.

The specific aims of the study are to:

1. improve caregiver RS competency, including a decrease in stress;
2. improve adolescents' self-reported coping strategies through enhanced coping self-efficacy; and
3. decrease adolescents' self-reported psychological problems within the EMBRace treatment group.

By posttest and 6-week follow-up, EMBRace families are hypothesized to:

1. be rated as and rate themselves as more competent in their RS practices, including less stress;
2. report more satisfactory coping and higher coping self-efficacy scores; and
3. report less psychological problems relative to pre-test and a control group.

The success of an EMBRace pilot and subsequent clinical trials can lead to its uptake by service agencies and youth-facing organizations to address the pervasive societal problem of racial discrimination for Black youth and families. The reduction of psychological harm in Black families will have a reverberating impact in various systems (e.g., school, health, residential), which can also address the persistent gaps evident in these systems (e.g., achievement, life expectancy, resource). Furthermore, I seek to have a sustainable and long-term research agenda in the improvement of patient health given the community-oriented nature of EMBRace, which partners with families and organizations and trains clinicians for both the improvement of Black family outcomes and the treatment of race-related problems.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* The child must be between the ages of 10-14 years.
* At least one caregiver will be primarily designated to attend sessions.
* At least one biological parent must identify or be identified as African American.
* The participant is a resident of the Detroit Metropolitan Area.
* The participant's primary language is English

Exclusion Criteria:

* Having a relative who is currently an EMBRace staff member.
* At least one of the biological parents does not identify as African American.