# Promoting Resilience and Reducing Health Disparities: Towards a Shift-and-Persist Intervention

> **NIH NIH K99** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN · 2024 · $118,341

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 Stark racial/ethnic disparities in chronic disease reflect greater exposure to deleterious contextual stressors,
including cultural stressors (e.g., racial discrimination) and low socioeconomic status. Over the life course,
these stressors “get under the skin” via maladaptive psychological and behavioral coping and persistent
activation of stress response systems, leading to uneven chronic disease burden by race/ethnicity. By
adolescence, cultural and socioeconomic stressors can produce the physiological, behavioral, and
psychological precursors to chronic conditions among minoritized youth. Thus, effective coping skills in
adolescence are critical to ameliorating the early signals of chronic disease and pre-empting chronic disease
progression among minoritized youth. Shift-and-persist (S&P) coping, where one reappraises life stressors
(i.e., shifting), while finding meaning and maintaining optimism (i.e., persisting), shows promise as a successful
coping strategy to mitigate the early signs of chronic disease among racial/ethnic minority adolescents, yet
more investigation is needed prior to designing S&P coping interventions for minority youth. Using data Project
PISCES, a 6-wave study of racially/ethnically diverse adolescents, in combination from data from the U.S.
Census Bureau, this project addresses three aims: 1) to understand how socioecological assets predict unique
trajectories of S&P coping across adolescence 2) elucidate how the health effects of configurations of
contextual stress may vary by distinct trajectories of shift-and-persist coping across adolescence and, 3)
design and conduct a feasibility study of a digital S&P coping single-session intervention targeting racial/ethnic
minority youth. The findings from this program of research will uncover key factors that contribute to the long-
term development of S&P coping, provide further clarity on the responsiveness of S&P coping over time to the
broader landscape of stressors that shape minoritized youth’s health outcomes, and contribute to evidence
regarding intervention modalities that can enhance S&P coping among racial/ethnic minority adolescents. The
proposed project combines an interdisciplinary program of research, mentorship, and
education/apprenticeships to provide robust training in the following areas: 1) mixture modeling analyses, 2)
content expertise development in biopsychosocial models of health and use of biomarkers in research, 3)
participatory intervention design and evaluation, and 4) professional development. Training in these domains
will propel the candidate towards a long-term career goal of becoming an independent investigator with the
ability to develop evidence-based health interventions which address contextual drivers of health among
racial/ethnic minority adolescents. Such interventions are crucial to facilitating healthy transitions to adulthood
for minoritized youth and disrupting pathways to chronic disease, consistent with the pri...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11055067
- **Project number:** 1K99MD019319-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
- **Principal Investigator:** Kiera Coulter
- **Activity code:** K99 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $118,341
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-16 → 2026-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11055067

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11055067, Promoting Resilience and Reducing Health Disparities: Towards a Shift-and-Persist Intervention (1K99MD019319-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11055067. Licensed CC0.

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