Trial reportEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2021
Helped into Harm: Mediation of a Housing Voucher Intervention on Mental Health and Substance Use in Boys.
Trial report in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- Insights From Developmental and Formative Evaluations: Developing and Implementing a Limited-Term Housing Mobility Program.Evaluation review · 2026Article
- Article
- Eviction, inability to pay rent, and youth mental health: a fixed effects study.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Replicated blood-based biomarkers for myalgic encephalomyelitis not explicable by inactivity.EMBO molecular medicine · 2025Article
- Mediating pathways between neighborhood disadvantage and cardiovascular risk: quasi-experimental evidence from a Danish refugee dispersal policy.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Practical causal mediation analysis: extending nonparametric estimators to accommodate multiple mediators and multiple intermediate confounders.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Gaps in the usage and reporting of multiple imputation for incomplete data: findings from a scoping review of observational studies addressing causal questions.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- The social determinants of mental health and disorder: evidence, prevention and recommendations.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2024Article
- The need to bring community, policy makers and researchers to the table in prevention programs.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2024Article
- Using instrumental variables to address unmeasured confounding in causal mediation analysis.Biometrics · 2024Article
- Eviction as a community health exposure.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2024Review
- Social Deprivation and Population Density Trajectories Before and After Psychotic Disorder Diagnosis.JAMA psychiatry · 2023Article
- Efficient and flexible estimation of natural direct and indirect effects under intermediate confounding and monotonicity constraints.Biometrics · 2023Article
- Unaddressed Sources of Bias Lead to Biased Conclusions About Sexual Orientation Change Efforts and Suicidality in Sexual Minority Individuals.Archives of sexual behavior · 2023Article
- When the Ends do not Justify the Means: Learning Who is Predicted to Have Harmful Indirect Effects.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, (Statistics in Society) · 2022Article
- The long shadow of residential racial segregation: Associations between childhood residential segregation trajectories and young adult health among Black US Americans.Health & place · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundInterventions can have harmful effects among subgroups they intend to help. The Moving To Opportunity experiment, in which families were randomized to receive a Section 8 housing voucher, was one example. Voucher receipt generally resulted in better long-term mental health and lower substance use and risk behavior outcomes among adolescent girls, but resulted in worse outcomes among adolescent boys. Reasons for this discrepancy and the unintended harmful health effects for boys are unclear. We used mediation analysis to estimate processes through which voucher receipt was hypothesized to affect adolescent mental health and substance use.
methodsWe used longitudinal data (10-15 years) on boys enrolled in Moving To Opportunity. We estimated interventional (also known as stochastic) indirect effects of voucher receipt on mental health and substance use outcomes through mediators capturing aspects of the school environment, neighborhood poverty, and instability of the social environment. We also estimated interventional direct effects not operating through these mediators. We used a robust, efficient, nonparametric substitution estimator in the targeted minimum loss-based framework.
resultsHousing voucher receipt increased long-term risk of any diagnostic statistical manual disorder, any mood disorder, any externalizing disorder, and cigarette smoking among boys. The majority (between 69% and 90%) of the total negative long-term effects could be explained by indirect effects through the mediators considered.
conclusionsThis evidence suggests that, even though the intervention had the desired effects on neighborhood poverty and the school environment, these "positives" ultimately negatively impacted the long-term mental health and behaviors of boys.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.