From the Center for Disease Control: The death rate for African Americans has declined about 25% over 17 years, primarily for those aged 65 years and older. Even with these improvements, new analysis shows that younger African Americans are living with or dying of many conditions typically found in white Americans at older ages.
From the Office of Minority Health, conditions in the African American community, such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, stroke, and more, are profiled here.
Black Americans offer a mixed assessment of the progress that has been made improving health outcomes for Black people: 47% say health outcomes for Black people have gotten better over the past 20 years, while 31% say they’ve stayed about the same and 20% think they’ve gotten worse.
A pamphlet from the United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Child and Aging Health Protection Division: Children 's Environmental Health Disparities.
Epigenetics is one mechanism by which environmental factors such as childhood stress, racial discrimination, economic hardship, and depression can affect gene expression without altering the underlying genetic sequence. This article provides a narrative review of the literature on epigenetics as a mechanism by which differential environmental exposure could explain racial differences in chronic pain.
This infographic looks at the persistent disparities in health and health care for Black people, which reflect structural and systematic inequities rooted in racism and discrimination. Although disparities in health coverage for Black people narrowed after passage of the Affordable Care Act, they continue to face higher rates of illness and death compared to White people.
New data indicate that environmentally based stressful life events can induce the placement of chemical groups on one’s genetic material that have lifelong effects and that can even be transferred across generations. The changes are called epigenetic because they do not affect the DNA sequences that encode genes conveying genetic inheritance of traits, but only affect how easily genes are turned on or off during development and throughout one’s life.
Compared to their white counterparts, African Americans are generally at higher risk for heart diseases, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza and pneumonia, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS, according to the Office of Minority Health, part of the Department for Health and Human Services.
Disease doesn’t discriminate. Disease also doesn’t operate in a vacuum. As public health researchers have spent more time looking at how disease affects certain populations, public health professionals have come to realize the critical impact that social determinants play in people’s health: everything from the economy, the environment, access to food, clean air, and water affect a person’s health. Where a person lives can have a direct impact in how long they live and the type of health they encounter during their life.
While the transgenerational transmission mechanism of trauma
is still being questioned by many epigenetic researchers today, and thus not universally
accepted by the peer community, it is interesting to consider that activists in favor of
reparations related to slavery, especially African Americans, as well as anthropologists
and philosophers, are increasingly citing this reasoning of cause and effect as ‘proof’–
which allegedly demonstrates that ‘race’ has indeed entered the body through the
epigenome.
The OMH Knowledge Center is the largest dedicated repository of health disparities information in the nation, with a collection of more than 70,000 articles, reports, books, journals, organizations, and multimedia resources related to the health status of racial and ethnic minority populations.
Many black and white Americans have been taught that slavery ended by legislative means in
1865 – so the issue is neatly side-stepped in school curricula, print and broadcast media. The removal of the slave shackle is important, but what about the emotional damage suffered by the enslaved? This book demonstrates that the bandages from the 400 year-old abscess of slavery remains un-healed.
This two-volume set examines the psychological, social, physical, and environmental factors that undermine or support healthy development in African American children while considering economic, historical, and public policies. These books address the current political, global, economic, and social contexts as they impact African American families and tackle the tough issues of genes, environment, and race.
African Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. In Caring for Equality David McBride chronicles the struggle by African Americans to improve poor black health conditions as well as inadequate medical care--caused by slavery, racism, and discrimination--since the arrival of African slaves in America.
Chapters provide expert insights into sociocultural factors that influence mental health, the prevalence of particular disorders among African American adolescents, ethnically salient assessment and diagnostic methods, and the evidence base for specific models.
While there have been significant efforts in recent years to eliminate health disparities, serious disparities continue to exist especially with regard to African-American men who continue to suffer disproportionately from poor health when compared to other racial, ethnic, and gender groups in the United States. This book covers social determinants of health and offers viable strategies for reducing health disparities.
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African American Children and Mental Health [2 Volumes]
Caring for Equality
Handbook of Mental Health in African American Youth
Social Determinants of Health among African-American Men