Communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health
outcomes
Area-level racial prejudice drives health inequities, research finds


Date:
March 7, 2022
Source:
American Psychological Association
Summary:
People who live in communities with higher levels of racial
prejudice have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease
and mental health problems and higher overall mortality rates,
according to new research.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== People who live in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice
have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease and mental
health problems and higher overall mortality rates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.


==========================================================================
The researchers conducted a systematic review of fourteen papers that
used data gathered from Google, Twitter and other big-data sources to
look at how prejudice and health are intertwined in communities across
the United States.

"Racism is gaining recognition as a fundamental driver of health
inequities," said lead study author Eli Michaels, MPH, a doctoral
candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. "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. The studies included in this review revealed that living in
an area with high levels of racial prejudice may harm health and widen
racial health inequities." The research was published in the journal
Health Psychology.

The studies in the review used a variety of sources to measure
community-level racial prejudice and included tens of millions of data
points from large-scale surveys, internet searches and social media. Three studies analyzed data from Google Trends on how often users' searches
included a racial slur. Four studies analyzed data from Twitter on tweets
that included negative sentiments toward people of color. Three studies
used data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative
survey of social and political attitudes in the United States. And four
studies used data from Project Implicit, an online tool that assesses
people's implicit biases toward various groups. All of the data were
coded by geographic area.

The studies examined how these different indicators of area-level racial prejudice correlated with health outcomes among individuals living
in those areas, including mortality rates, adverse birth outcomes for
mothers and infants, cardiovascular outcomes, mental health and overall self-rated health.

All of the studies found an association between communities' levels of
racial prejudice and adverse health outcomes for the people of color
who lived there; four studies also showed a similar association among
white residents (two studies showed a smaller but still harmful effect
on whites compared with people of color).

"The majority of research on racial discrimination and health to date has focused on experiences at the individual level," said Amani M. Allen,
PhD, MPH, a professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at
the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and senior
author of the study.

"The emerging body of work examined in this review is an important step
in going above the level of the individual to capture the context of
place and how it may impact the health of people living in those places,"
Allen said. "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." There are various theories as to how community racial prejudice may harm health, according to the researchers. One 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. At
the community level, more racial prejudice may erode social capital --
defined as "the norms of reciprocity, trust and social obligation" in
a community - - leading to less social and emotional support to buffer stressful life events and less political support for policies and programs
that could enhance the health and welfare of all community members.

More research is needed to disentangle these various factors that may
tie community-level racial prejudice to adverse health outcomes for
communities overall and for people of color in particular, according to
the researchers.

"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."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
American_Psychological_Association. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Eli K. Michaels, Christine Board, Mahasin S. Mujahid, Corinne
A. Riddell,
David H. Chae, Rucker C. Johnson, Amani M. Allen. Area-level racial
prejudice and health: A systematic review.. Health Psychology,
2022; DOI: 10.1037/hea0001141 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307190702.htm

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