Alumna to presents at APHA Conference: "Health Practices of Low Income Youth"

UCI Alumna Tessa Pulido will present her independent research at the American Public Health Association (APHA) 2019 annual meeting in Philadelphia, November 2-6. The conference theme is "Creating the Healthiest Nation: For science. For action. For health." The title of Pulido's presentation is "Health Practices of Low Income Youth."

Pulido received her Bachelor of Arts in Education Science and her Bachelor of Arts in Public Health Policy, both cum laude, in June 2019. While an undergraduate, Pulido was a research assistant in David Liu's lab, Super Science Squad. Pullido has developed her presentation from data collected as part of Liu's dissertation research. Liu is listed as second author on her article.

​Currently, Pulido is working at Telecare as a personal service coordinator. She outreaches to homeless individuals in the county and connects them with mental health services. She plans to purse her MPH beginning in Fall 2020.

Presentation Abstract

​Health behavior research has primarily focused on how the individual can modify behaviors to improve health outcomes. However, there must be a shift in the way health behavior is understood and studied. By doing so, researchers can explain how individuals learn and continuously practice healthy behaviors. Currently, researchers have solely relied on the individual to change their behaviors without considering the social contexts. The purpose of this study is to examine health behavior through a Social Practice Theory lens in order to answer the following questions:

1. What are the health practices of low-income youth and where do they engage in these behaviors?
2. How does engagement, whether it be the behavior itself or the extent of practicing the behavior, change depending on the youth’s setting?

I used thematic analysis with MAXQDA software to analyze video recorded lesson plans, which were delivered to a 5th grade science class of approximately 30 students at a charter school in a low-income community in Southern California. Preliminary analyses indicate

1. students understand that eating breakfast at home and at school is a healthy practice and
2. student health practices, such as consuming sugar, change between settings, such as from home to school.

Based on these findings, I concluded that students apply health practices in multiple settings. Implications of these research include the increased need for health interventions that look at health practices across settings and create context based interventions that can be modified to different populations. ​