Maltreatment and Resilience to Adolescent Substance Use

This project aims to examine the roles of risk and protective attributes of youth activity spaces—refers to areas or places a person visits in daily routine— in shaping the pathways from unique longitudinal child maltreatment experiences to distinct and resilient patterns of adolescent substance use.

Data are drawn from multiple sources: 1) a multi-site cohort longitudinal study of high-risk youth (Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect [LONGSCAN]; 2) official child welfare records (Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System [SACWIS]); 3) and a large-scale youth health study of adolescents in Franklin County, Ohio (The Adolescent Health and Development in Context [AHDC] study). Findings will offer valuable insight into key contextual mechanisms and protective factors that can be targeted in interventions to prevent substance use among high-risk, vulnerable youth.