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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Item African American Women's Coping with Health Care Prejudice(2005) Benkert, R.Abstract available at publisher's web site.Item Cross-Sectional Association between Perceived Discrimination and Hypertension in African-American Men and Women: The Pitt County Study(2007) Roberts, C. B.; Vines, A. I.; Kaufman, J. S.; James, S. A.Abstract available at the publisher's web site.Item Exploring Unconscious Bias in Disparities Research and Medical Education(2011) van Ryn, M.; Saha, S.The evidence that physician behavior and decision making may contribute to racial inequalities in health care1,2,3,4,5 is difficult to reconcile with the fact that most physicians are genuinely motivated to provide good care to all their patients.6 This apparent contradiction can cause considerable cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable feeling that occurs when holding 2 conflicting ideas simultaneously. Cognitive dissonance has been shown to be so aversive that people are highly motivated to resolve it, often by discounting the evidence supporting one of the conflicting beliefs. For scientists, however, cognitive dissonance motivates inquiry into how 2 seemingly contradictory sets of facts can coexist. The study by Haider and colleagues 7 in this issue of JAMA is part of a growing body of work applying concepts and methods from cognitive and social psychology to medical care and education research to understand and inform …Item Epidemiologic research on health disparities: some thoughts on history and current developments.(2009) James, Sherman AIn this introduction to volume 31 of Epidemiologic Reviews, the author traces the history of health disparities research in epidemiology and situates the 10 review articles comprising this edition within this history. With the aid of a conceptual model describing the key determinants of health disparities, he offers several suggestions for improving future epidemiologic research on health disparities.Item Black communities' belief in “AIDS as genocide”☆A barrier to overcome for HIV prevention(1993) Guinan, Mary E.The belief that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a form of genocide targeted at the black population is prevalent in black communities in the United States. Public health authorities are distrusted, in part because of the legacy of the Tuskegee Study of untreated syphilis, a perceived racist experiment. For effective interventions to prevent the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus in black communities, genocidal fears and beliefs must be addressed and black community leaders should be involved in planning and implementation.Item African American Physicians and Organized Medicine, 1846-1968: Origins of a Racial Divide(2008) Baker, R. B.; Washington, H. A.; Olakanmi, O.; Savitt, T. L.; Jacobs, E. A.; Hoover, E.; Wynia, M. K.Like the nation as a whole, organized medicine in the United States carries a legacy of racial bias and segregation that should be understood and acknowledged. For more than 100 years, many state and local medical societies openly discriminated against black physicians, barring them from membership and from professional support and advancement. The American Medical Association was early and persistent in countenancing this racial segregation. Several key historical episodes demonstrate that many of the decisions and practices that established and maintained medical professional segregation were challenged by black and white physicians, both within and outside organized medicine. The effects of this history have been far reaching for the medical profession and, in particular, the legacy of segregation, bias, and exclusion continues to adversely affect African American physicians and the patients they serve.Item Self-reported Racial Discrimination and Substance Use in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Adults Study(2007) Borrell, Luisa N.; Jacobs, David R., Jr.; Williams, David R.; Pletcher, Mark J.; Houston, Thomas K.; Kiefe, Catarina I.The authors investigated whether substance use and self-reported racial discrimination were associated in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. Smoking status, alcohol consumption, and lifetime use of marijuana, amphetamines, and opiates were ascertained in 2000–2001, 15 years after baseline(1985–1986). Most of the 1,507 African Americans reported having experienced racial discrimination, 79.5% at year 7 and 74.6% at year 15, compared with 29.7% and 23.7% among the 1,813 Whites. Compared with African Americans experiencing no discrimination, African Americans reporting any discrimination had more education and income, while the opposite was true for Whites (all p < 0.001). African Americans experiencing racial discrimination in at least three of seven domains in both years had 1.87 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.18, 2.96) and 2.12 (95% CI: 1.42, 3.17) higher odds of reporting current tobacco use and having any alcohol in the past year than did their counterparts experiencing no discrimination. With control for income and education, African Americans reporting discrimination in three or more domains in both years had 3.31 (95% CI: 1.90, 5.74) higher odds of using marijuana 100 or more times in their lifetime, relative to African Americans reporting no discrimination. These associations were similarly positive in Whites but not significant. Substance use may be an unhealthy coping response to perceived unfair treatment for some individuals, regardless of their race/ethnicity.Item Neighborhood Characteristics Associated with the Location of Food Stores and Food Service Places(2002) Morland, Kimberly; Wing, Steve; Diez Roux, Ana; Poole, CharlesBackground: Although the relationship between diet and disease is well established, sustainable dietary changes that would affect risk for disease have been difficult to achieve. Whereas individual factors are traditional explanations for the inability of some people to change dietary habits, little research has investigated how the physical availability of healthy foods affects individuals’ diets. This study examines the distribution of food stores and food service places by neighborhood wealth and racial segregation. Methods: Names and addresses of places to buy food in Mississippi, North Carolina, Maryland, and Minnesota were obtained from respective departments of health and agriculture. Addresses were geocoded to census tracts. Median house values were used to estimate neighborhood wealth, while the proportion of black residents was used to measure neighborhood racial segregation. Results: Compared to the poorest neighborhoods, large numbers of supermarkets and gas stations with convenience stores are located in wealthier neighborhoods. There are 3 times fewer places to consume alcoholic beverages in the wealthiest compared to the poorest neighborhoods (prevalence ratio [PR]0.3, 95% confidence interval [CI]0.1– 0.6). Regarding neighborhood segregation, there are 4 times more supermarkets located in white neighborhoods compared to black neighborhoods (PR4.3, 95% CI1.5–12.5). Conclusions: Without access to supermarkets, which offer a wide variety of foods at lower prices, poor and minority communities may not have equal access to the variety of healthy food choices available to nonminority and wealthy communities.