Minority Health and Health Equity Archive

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769

Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.genetics

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
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    Race, socioeconomic status, and health: Complexities, ongoing challenges, and research opportunities
    (2010) Williams, David R.; Mohammed, Selina A.; Leavell, Jacinta; Collins, Chiquita
    Abstract available at publisher's web site.
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    Genetic bottlenecks, perceived racism, and hypertension risk among African Americans and first-generation African immigrants.
    (2001) Poston, W S; Pavlik, V N; Hyman, D J; Ogbonnaya, K; Hanis, C L; Haddock, C K; Hyder, M L; Foreyt, J P
    The complexity of factors influencing the development of hypertension (HTN) in African Americans has given rise to theories suggesting that genetic changes occurred due to selection pressures/genetic bottleneck effects (ie, constriction of existing genetic variability) over the course of the slave trade. Ninety-nine US-born and 86 African-born health professionals were compared in a cross-sectional survey examining genetic and psychosocial predictors of HTN. We examined the distributions of three genetic loci (G-protein, AGT-235, and ACE I/D) that have been associated with increased HTN risk. There were no significant differences between US-born African Americans and African-born immigrants in the studied genetic loci or biological variables (eg, plasma renin and angiotensin converting enzyme activity), except that the AGT-235 homozygous T genotype was somewhat more frequent among African-born participants than US-born African Americans. Only age, body mass index, and birthplace consistently demonstrated associations with HTN status. Thus, there was no evidence of a genetic bottleneck in the loci studied, ie, that US-born African Americans have different genotype distributions that increase their risk for HTN. In fact, some of the genotypic distributions evidenced lower frequencies of HTN-related alleles among US-born African Americans, providing evidence of European admixture. The consistent finding that birthplace (ie, US vs Africa) was associated with HTN, even though it was not always significant, suggests potential and unmeasured cultural, lifestyle, and environmental differences between African immigrants and US-born African Americans that are protective against HTN.
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    Recruitment of Three Generations of African American Women Into Genetics Research
    (2008) Taylor, J. Y.
    Abstract available at publisher's web site.
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    Perceived health status and utilization of specialty care: Racial and ethnic disparities in patients with chronic diseases
    (2010) Glover, S.; Bellinger, J. D; Bae, S.; Rivers, P. A; Singh, K. P
    Abstract available at publisher's web site.
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    A reconceptualization of the role of biology in contributing to race/ethnic disparities in health outcomes
    (2001) Frank, Reanne
    An increasing amount of attention is being given to the inappropriate use of contributionsfrom the biological sciences in research on race/ethnic disparities in health. This discussionwill take a first step towards productive interdisciplinary collaboration with the biologicalsciences by recognizing the methodological and ethical problems underlying current researchon race/ethnic disparities. An alternative model is then presented that specifies the role ofbiology in contributing to race/ethnic disparities in health and mortality without reinforcinga biological conceptualization of race.
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    Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Racial Disparities in Preterm Birth
    (2010) Dolan, Siobhan M.
    The preterm birth rate exceeds 12% in the United States, and preterm birth continues to be a clinical and public health challenge globally. Even though preterm birth is a major contributor to infant mortality and lifelong morbidity, there are few effective strategies to predict preterm birth and few clinical interventions to prevent it. Genomic research approaches that identify risk factors at the intersection of genetics and the environment will likely provide insights. Both genetic and environmental factors are known to contribute to the racial disparity seen in preterm birth. Through the identification of relevant gene-environment interactions that contribute to preterm birth and may underlie the racial disparity in preterm birth, research that will translate to clinical practice and ultimately prevent a number of preterm births is possible. Mt Sinai J Med 77:160–165, 2010. © 2010 Mount Sinai School of Medicine
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    Prostate cancer in black and white Americans.
    (2003) Reddy, Sreekanth; Shapiro, Marc; Morton, Ronald; Brawley, Otis W
    The prostate cancer incidence and mortality of black Americans is among the highest in the world. The reasons have not been adequately explained. Similar disparities have been noted for men of sub-Saharan origin living in Brazil and the Caribbean. Avenues of investigation have assessed racial and ethnic differences in diet as well as possible differences in the prevalence of genetics (both polymorphisms and mutations). There are studies to suggest that there are no racial differences in outcome when there is equal treatment. Several studies show that there are racial differences in patterns of care in the US and it has been hypothesized that this contributes to some of the racial disparity in survival after diagnosis.
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    The Use of Family Health Histories to Address Health Disparities in an African American Community
    (2007) Vogel, Kristen J.; Murthy, Vinaya S.; Dudley, Beth; Grubs, Robin E.; Gettig, Elizabeth; Ford, Angela; Thomas, Stephen B.
    African Americans continue to suffer from health disparities. The Center for Minority Health (CMH) within the University of Pittsburgh has the mission to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. CMH has designed and implemented the Family Health History (FHH) Initiative. The FHH Initiative places geneticcounseling graduate students in the African American community to provide risk assessments and emphasize the importance of family history as it pertains to disease prevention. The FHH Initiative also allows participants to enroll into the Minority Research Recruitment Database (MRRD). This enables CMH to alert individuals to available research participation opportunities. In the first year of this program, 225 African Americans completed their family health histories. More than 60% of individuals enrolled in the MRRD. The authors report their initial successes and challenges of an initiative that incorporates awareness of family history information, proper screening guidelines, behavior modification recommendations, and support for participation in clinical research.
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    Intelligence, Race, and Genetics
    (2005) Sternberg, Robert J; Grigorenko, Elena L; Kidd, Kenneth K
    In this article, the authors argue that the overwhelming portion of the literature on intelligence, race, and genetics is based on folk taxonomies rather than scientific analysis. They suggest that because theorists of intelligence disagree as to what it is, any consideration of its relationships to other constructs must be tentative at best. They further argue that race is a social construction with no scientific definition. Thus, studies of the relationship between race and other constructs may serve social ends but cannot serve scientific ends. No gene has yet been conclusively linked to intelligence, so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time. The authors also show that heritability, a behavior-genetic concept, is inadequate in regard to providing such a link.
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    In the Eye of the Storm: Race and Genomics in Research and Practice
    (2005) Wang, Vivian Ota; Sue, Stanley
    The difficulties of operationalizing race in research and practice for social, behavioral, and genetic researchers and practitioners are neither new nor related to recent genetic knowledge. For geneticists, the bases for understanding groups are clines, observed traits that gradually change in frequency between geographic regions without distinct identifiable population boundaries and population histories that carry information about the distribution of genetic variants. For psychologists, race may not exist or be a social and cultural construct associated with fluid social inferences. Because definitions of populations and race can be socially and biologically incongruent, the authors suggest that geneticists and social and behavioral scientists and clinicians attend to external validity issues by operationalizing population and racial categories and avoiding race proxies for other biological, social, and cultural constructs in research designs, data analyses, and clinical practice.