{"doi":"10.1093/aje/kwae050","title":"School racial/ethnic composition, effect modification by caring teacher/staff presence, and mid-/late-life depressive symptoms: findings from the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans","abstract":"For Black students in the United States, attending schools with a higher proportion of White students is associated with worse mental and physical health outcomes in adolescence/early adulthood. To our knowledge, no prior studies have evaluated the association between school racial/ethnic composition from kindergarten through grade 12 and later-life mental health. In a cohort of Black adults aged ≥50 years in Northern California who retrospectively reported (2017-2020) school racial/ethnic composition for grades 1, 6, 9, and 12, we assessed the association between attending a school with mostly Black students versus not and mid-/late-life depressive symptoms (8-item Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression score, standardized to the 2000 US adult population) using age-, sex/gender-, southern US birth-, and parental education-adjusted generalized estimating equations, and assessed effect modification by the presence of a caring teacher/staff member. Levels of later-life depressive symptoms were lower among those who attended schools with mostly Black students in grades 1 and 6 (β = -0.12 [95% CI, -0.23 to 0.00] and β = -0.11 [95% CI, -0.22 to 0.00], respectively). In grade 6, this difference was larger for students without an adult at school who cared about them (β = -0.29 [95% CI, -0.51 to -0.07] vs β = -0.04 [95% CI, -0.17 to 0.09]). Among Black Americans, experiencing early schooling with mostly Black students may have later-life mental health benefits; this protective association appears more important for students without the presence of caring teachers/staff. This article is part of a Special Collection on Mental Health.","journal":"American Journal of Epidemiology","year":2024,"id":478651,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9572,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":486556,"name":"Eleanor Hayes‐Larson","orcid":"0000-0001-8299-2389","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1047414,"name":"Yingyan Wu","orcid":"0000-0003-1875-7493","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366567,"name":"Rachel Peterson","orcid":"0000-0001-6818-7009","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328344,"name":"Kristen M. George","orcid":"0000-0001-8773-7678","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366568,"name":"Paola Gilsanz","orcid":"0000-0002-7635-381X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106142,"name":"M. Maria Glymour","orcid":"0000-0001-9644-3081","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583576,"name":"Marilyn D. Thomas","orcid":"0000-0003-3245-6363","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":325844,"name":"Lisa L. Barnes","orcid":"0000-0002-0072-9817","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":226637,"name":"Rachel A. Whitmer","orcid":"0009-0006-9511-6138","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":486559,"name":"Elizabeth Rose Mayeda","orcid":"0000-0002-6326-0163","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":886786,"name":"Taylor M. Mobley","orcid":"0000-0001-9699-6911","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":40,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:06:46.330532Z","pmid":"38634611","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}