New Study Reveals Broad Health Implications Of Racism On Health
Racial prejudice is having a massive impact on the health of minorities, according to a new study.
The American Psychological Association reports that people who live in areas with high racism suffer with more heart disease, mental health problems and increased mortality rates. The research included 14 various studies, which gathered data from Google, Twitter and other sources.
Eli Michaels, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the study, in a statement, “Because racism is multidimensional, dismantling it and its effects on health will require multidimensional solutions. Research identifying the root causes of, and testing interventions to shift, our collective prejudice is an urgent priority.”
“Racism is gaining recognition as a fundamental driver of health inequities. Leveraging big data to capture area-level racial prejudice is one innovative approach to measuring the overall racial climate in which people live, work, play and pray,” Michaels added.
Imani M. Allen, a professor at the University of California Berkeley and a senior author of the study, also stated, “As we see from this review, living in an environment with an overall climate that is prejudiced against people of color is not only bad for racially marginalized groups, but for everyone. Area-level racial prejudice is a social determinant of population health.”
The studies in the review examined numerous sources to measure community-level racial prejudice and included tens of millions of data points from large-scale surveys, social media and internet searches.
The studies looked at how different indicators of area-level racial prejudice correlated with health outcomes among individuals living in certain areas, including mortality rates, adverse birth outcomes for mothers and infants, cardiovascular outcomes, mental health and overall self-rated health.
An association between communities’ levels of racial prejudice and adverse health outcomes for people of color who lived in areas with high racism, including mortality rates, adverse birth outcomes for mothers and infants, cardiovascular outcomes, mental health and overall self-rated health.
One of the theories of how community racial prejudice may harm one’s health is that, at an individual level, living in a community with more prejudice could increase the number of prejudiced interactions that a person experiences, causing harmful stress.
“Because racism is multidimensional, dismantling it and its effects on health will require multidimensional solutions,” Michaels said. “Research identifying the root causes of, and testing interventions to shift, our collective prejudice is an urgent priority.”
Read the full study here.
