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The use of active transportation (AT), such as walking, cycling, or even public transit, as a means of transport offers an opportunity to increase youth physical activity and improve health. Despite the well-known benefits of AT, there are environmental and social variables that converge on the AT experiences of low-income youth and youth of color (YOC) that have yet to be fully uncovered. This study uses an intersectional framework, largely focusing on the race-gender-class trinity, to examine youth AT within a context of transportation inequity. Theoretically guided by the Ecological Model of Active Transportation, focus groups were completed with two groups of girls (15 participants) and two groups of boys (nine participants) ranging between the ages of 12-15 years who lived within the Washington D.C. area. This research found race, gender, and class to be inhibitors of AT for both boys and girls, but with more pronounced negative influences on girls.

OBJECTIVE: Research on the heterogeneity in drinking patterns of urban minorities within a socioecological framework is rare. The purpose of this study was to explore multiple, distinct patterns of drinking from adolescence to young adulthood in a sample of urban minority youth and to examine the influence of neighborhood, family, and peers on these trajectories. METHOD: Data are from a longitudinal study of 584 (56% male) primarily Black (87%) youth who were first sampled in childhood based on their residence in low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore City and followed up annually through age 26. Data were analyzed using group-based trajectory modeling and multinomial logistic regression. RESULTS: Modeling revealed six trajectories from ages 14 to 26: abstainer, experimenter, adult increasing, young adult increasing, adolescent limited, and adolescent increasing. Neighborhood disadvantage was a risk factor for drinking regardless of the timing of onset. Perceptions of availability, peer drinking, and parental approval for drinking were risk factors for underage drinking trajectories, whereas parental supervision was a significant protective factor. Positive social activities in neighborhoods was protective against increased drinking, whereas a decline in perceptions of peer drinking was associated with adolescent-limited drinking. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings uniquely highlight the importance of developing interventions involving parents for urban minority youth for whom family is particularly relevant in deterring underage drinking. Perhaps most importantly, our data suggest that interventions that support positive social activities in disadvantaged neighborhoods are protective against adolescent drinking and altering perceptions of peer drinking may reduce adolescent drinking among low-income, urban minority youth.

The use of active transportation (AT), such as walking, cycling, or even public transit, as a means of transport offers an opportunity to increase youth physical activity and improve health. Despite the well-known benefits of AT, there are environmental and social variables that converge on the AT experiences of low-income youth and youth of color (YOC) that have yet to be fully uncovered. This study uses an intersectional framework, largely focusing on the race-gender-class trinity, to examine youth AT within a context of transportation inequity. Theoretically guided by the Ecological Model of Active Transportation, focus groups were completed with two groups of girls (15 participants) and two groups of boys (nine participants) ranging between the ages of 12–15 years who lived within the Washington D.C. area. This research found race, gender, and class to be inhibitors of AT for both boys and girls, but with more pronounced negative influences on girls.