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This chapter presents a nine-year longitudinal study designed to discover how educationally disadvantaged African American adolescents, with the potential to attend college, began to classify themselves as “scholars”. The study specifically examined Project EXCEL (Encouraging Excellence in Children Extends Learning). The program was intended to promote athletic accomplishments rather than academic excellence with the premise that a scholar identity requires more than an academically enriched curriculum to assist marginalized students in achieving their full capacity. In addition, the program also helped students in addressing cultural stereotypes through a critical understanding of the school culture of the larger society. The examination of both the development of the scholar identity and the effect of that identity on students' motivation to achieve academically is presented as well.

This chapter assesses how the downward extension of adult responsibilities to adolescence (i.e. adultification) and community cohesion buffer the effects of delinquent behavior, exposure to deviant peers, and exposure to neighborhood hazard on depressive symptoms among African American youth living in urban public housing. Results show that adultification is a protective factor in the face of neighborhood risk and delinquent behaviors. Assuming a high degree of adult responsibilities was indirectly related to increased emotional well-being. Community cohesion, however, negatively influenced adolescents' sense of emotional well-being. Site variations were also noted in depressive symptoms, suggesting that depressive symptoms were directly related to the city where a youth lives. More specifically, youth in Washington, DC, reported significantly lower symptoms than youth in St. Louis and Philadelphia.

Studies show that African American adolescents may be at higher risk for adverse behavioral health outcomes, such as depression, compared to other racial/ethnic minority youth. Additionally, negative characteristics of the urban environment, such as community violence, poverty, and deviant peer groups, may further contribute to adverse outcomes for African American adolescents, particularly those living in public housing settings. This chapter examines mental health interventions and services that might be responsive to the unique mental health challenges faced by African American adolescents in public housing. It outlines current empirical research on this vulnerable population and offers pragmatic solutions which center on how mental health interventions and services might be targeted at the family, community, and school levels to stymie the current of context-induced, untreated mental health needs for African American adolescents living in public housing settings.

From spring 2005 through summer 2008, cross-sectional data were collected from 898 African American adolescents living in public housing developments in four large US cities: New York City (Queens), North Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Washington, DC. This chapter explains the methodology and procedures used to conduct this study. First, it describes the process for community engagement. Second, it explains the research protocol and provides a brief description of the sample. Third, it describes all measures used to collect data, including scoring information and psychometric properties where applicable. Finally, it discusses each housing development, including the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of each research site.

This chapter examines how community cohesion buffers the relationship between multiple risk factors and alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use by African American adolescents in urban public housing. It shows that increased community cohesion moderates the relationship between exposure to delinquent peers and substance abuse; this is consistent with previous research suggesting that community cohesion has the potential to cushion negative behavioral effects. Increased community cohesion also moderates a positive relationship between witnessing community violence and substance use. This observation may have important implications for youth in urban public housing, and it points to the role that community cohesion plays in facilitating a youth's positive adaptation.

Ecological models highlight the significance of the neighborhood context for understanding youth health outcomes. However, only recently has empirical research examined which aspects of the neighborhood context may influence health-risk behaviors. This chapter examines depressive symptoms as a possible mechanism linking adolescents' perceptions of neighborhood disorder with sexual-risk behavior and substance use. It also considers whether individual, family, and peer influences moderated the association between neighborhood disorder and these health-risk behaviors. Results show an indirect effect of neighborhood disorder, such that neighborhood risk was associated with depressive symptoms, which in turn were associated with substance use. However, neighborhood risk remained associated with sexual-risk behavior after accounting for depressive symptoms, suggesting that other mechanisms are responsible for the association between neighborhood disorder and adolescents' sexual-risk behavior.

This chapter presents a summary and synthesis of the volume and provides direction for future research in public housing. One of the major contributions of this book is the introduction of a new theoretical perspective for understanding child and adolescent development within the context of public neighborhoods. It concludes that interventions for youth living in urban public housing need to be developed to incorporate the unique context of their environments. By focusing interventions on both protective and risk factors found in the public housing environment and directing those interventions at different levels of systems in the youth's life, there is potential to improve the developmental trajectory of the youth residents of urban public housing.