Link found between racism and hypertension
Yvette Cozier and colleagues find a link between racism and hypertension in certain black women.
Yvette Cozier, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health and an epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center, and colleagues at the center recently published an analysis that points to a link between racism and hypertension in a subgroup of black women.
In collaboration with researchers at Howard University, they instituted the Black Women’s Health Study, which in 1995 began surveying a group of 59,000 African-American women on various health and behavioral issues. Since then, the data received from the mail-in surveys has resulted in 64 publications on a number of health and social topics.
This particular analysis focused on whether black women, who are known to have a much higher incidence of hypertension than white women, have a greater risk for developing hypertension if they frequently perceive or experience racism in their everyday lives.
By analyzing the questionnaires, Cozier, an investigator and lead author of the analysis, along with other researchers, found that foreign-born black women who reported more frequent instances of racism had higher rates of hypertension. The association was weak for black women born in the United States; however, black women who grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods did experience a slight positive association between racism and hypertension.
“It’s not that [foreign born African-American women] never experienced racism, but certainly … different language may increase the amount of stress,” Cozier says. “And encountering the brand of racism that operates here versus what would operate in [a native] country, such as Africa, is different, and it’s stressful.”
These findings, according to Cozier, imply that negative social experiences such as racism can have a serious effect on health. “Racism is really not this benign thing,” she says. “It’s not about having thin or tough skin; it’s a real thing and it can affect people’s health.”