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A cross-national look at the health impacts of perceived healthcare discrimination in the rapidly aging populations of the U.S. and Brazil

Bell Fellows Angela Dixon and Leslie Adams

As populations continue to grow and live longer, their reliance on healthcare systems to help them prevent and treat the illnesses and disabilities associated with aging will also continue to grow. In order to support healthy aging within a society, it is imperative that barriers to healthcare access are minimized. Perceived healthcare discrimination is one such barrier that is worthy of deeper exploration, and now recent Harvard Bell Fellows Angela…

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What affects the mental health of a population that is now growing older in sub-Saharan Africa?

HAALSI men and women

Harvard Pop Center Director of Research & Research Scientist Elyse Jennings, recent Harvard Bell Fellow Leslie Adams, and senior data scientist at the University of Cape Town Chido Chinogurei have co-authored a study published in Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health (SSM-MH) that found that experiencing a marital dissolution was associated with more depressive symptoms than remaining married for both men and women, and men (but not women) reported greater…

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Combatting mental distress by shoring up resilience during COVID-19 pandemic

Headshot of Leslie Adams

A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders by our recent Bell Fellow Leslie Adams, PhD, and her colleagues takes a longitudinal look (with baseline and nine waves of follow-up data from March through August, 2020) at the relationship between resilience and mental distress in 6,008 participants in the Understanding America Study. “Adults living below the poverty line were less likely to report high resilience . . . participants…

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Assessing the scale for assessing depression in rural South Africa

Two South African women wearing colorful clothes

Researchers from the Harvard Pop Center in Cambridge, MA and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa who are affiliated with the HAALSI study have published a paper in the Journal of Affective Disorders that finds that the reliability of the commonly used scale to assess depression (Center for Epidemiologic Depression Scale (CES-D)) differed by gender. Authors of the study include: Leslie B. Adams, Meagan Farrell, Sumaya Mall,…

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When trying to receive health care for depression, discrimination does not help

Headshot of Leslie Adams

Our Bell Fellow Leslie Adams collaborated on this paper based on a qualitative component of a larger, mixed-methods, community-based participatory research study focused on understanding how health care discrimination influences depression treatment preferences. The study provides a more in-depth investigation of the implications of negative interactions in the health care sector for diverse people with lived experience of depression. The study was funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute…

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Harvard Bell Fellow Leslie Adams awarded two grants related to suicide prevention among Black men

Headshot of Leslie Adams

Our Bell Fellow Leslie Adams, PhD, has been awarded two grants that will help to fuel her research aimed at reducing inequalities in the use of mental health care services in marginalized populations. Congratulations to Dr. Adams on being selected as the recipient of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Young Investigators Award. This grant will allow her to pursue a two-year study (“Real-time assessments of suicidality among Black men:…

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Are brief, population-based depression measures suitable for Black men?

Headshot of Leslie Adams

Harvard Bell Fellow Leslie Adams, PhD, is lead author on a paper published in the American Journal of Men’s Health that explores whether the commonly used psychometric scale — the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) — accurately assesses depression among Black men. Findings show that several items on the CES-D scale may not fully capture the gendered depression experience for this group and should be interpreted with caution in…

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