Leveraging social media to promote body positivity among Latino adolescents

NIH RePORTER · MD · K01 · $135,702 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

The Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) will support my long-term career goal of testing whether the mental and physical health of youth, particularly those from communities with social and economic challenges, improves when social norms encourage widespread promotion of body positive messages. Negative attitudes/behaviors towards specific groups has been identified as a fundamental cause of health problems, but weight-related negative attitudes/behaviors has received relatively less attention. For larger bodied people, negative attitudes/behaviors because of weight are associated with suboptimal mental and physical outcomes (e.g., depression, disordered eating). High rates of adolescent obesity disproportionately impact Latino youth in the U.S. putting them at increased risk for poor health outcomes. Social media offers untapped potential to promote healthy norms around body size and shape. To leverage youth’s heavy engagement with social media and its ability to shape norms, I am proposing a social media intervention designed to positively influence adolescents’ views of those living in larger bodies, increase the likelihood that adolescents promote positive content about body size and shape, and discourage adolescents from engaging in harmful actions towards others because of their weight. The limited research on social media interventions to promote body positivity (positive feelings about body size and shape) has involved a one-time intervention exposure and has largely been done with White, female adult samples. My proposed research will address these gaps by studying male and female Latino youth who will receive multiple exposures to body positive messages via Instagram. The specific aims of this proposal are to (1) use qualitative methods to understand Latino youth’s view on body positive messages to inform the development of an Instagram body positivity campaign, (2) develop an Instagram body positivity campaign to increase body positivity a

Key facts

NIH application ID
11289473
Project number
5K01MD019721-03
Recipient
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Principal Investigator
Stephanie Lynn Albert
Activity code
K01
Funding institute
MD
Fiscal year
2026
Award amount
$135,702
Award type
5
Project period
2024-08-07T00:00:00 → 2029-02-28T00:00:00