Conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the National Institutes of Health, the investigation found that adolescents of mixed race were more likely to have other health problems as well.
"It did not matter what races the students identified with, the risks were higher for all of them if they did not identify with a single race," said Dr. J. Richard Udry, principal author of a paper on the work appearing in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
"Most of the risk items we assessed may be related to stress, and so we believe being of mixed race is a source of stress," Udry said. "From this work, we cannot identify further the sources of that stress. More research is needed to identify those sources and possibly suggest programs that might help biracial adolescents."
Udry is professor of maternal and child health at the UNC School of Public Health, professor of sociology in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences and a fellow at the Carolina Population Center. His co-authors are Dr. Rose Marie Li, formerly of NIH, and Janet Hendrickson-Smith, research associate at the UNC center.
The new findings derive from data compiled as part of the UNC-based National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the largest and most comprehensive survey of teen-agers ever conducted in the United States.
In the detailed surveys they completed, students could give more than one answer when asked about their race. Those who called themselves biracial tended to be more likely to smoke and drink, Udry said. Overall, older biracial children were more likely to have sex at younger ages, to have access to guns and to have poorer exp
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Contact: David Williamson
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3-Nov-2003