Breaking Bonds: Cultural Adaptation and Health across Hispanic/Latino Neighborhoods in Los Angeles

Recent evidence has shown that Hispanics/Latinos in the United States have disproportionately good health outcomes even in the face of economic hardship, a phenomenon known as the Hispanic/Latino Health Paradox. This study used both a spatial typology of neighborhoods and a hierarchical modeling approach to test the idea of spatially segmented cultural adaptation as a framework for unraveling the spatial and cultural differences in health outcomes across Hispanic/Latino neighborhood contexts and how this theory relates to changes in bonding social capital as a mechanism for explaining the loss of the health benefit. Data included the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, a longitudinal study of families in Los Angeles County focusing on the effects of neighborhood-level stressors on health for adults. Spatial analyses revealed a strong spatial relationship between concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration across Hispanic/Latino communities, resulting in a four-level neighborhood typology including the gateway, the barrio, the enclave, and the ethnoburb. Multilevel modeling revealed a significant association between neighborhood type and morbidity, with individuals in the most acculturated neighborhoods (the ethnoburbs) showing the highest illness scores, and those in the least acculturated neighborhoods (the gateways) showing the lowest scores.