health

Racial Discrimination Ages Black Americans Faster, According to a 25-Year-Long Study of Families

Black Lives Matter protest in London May 31. Credit: Tara Carey / Equality Now

Nov 20 2020 (IPS) – I’m part of a that has been following more than 800 Black American families for almost 25 years. We found that people who had reported experiencing high levels of racial discrimination when they were young teenagers than those who hadn’t. This elevated depression, in turn, showed up in their blood samples, which revealed accelerated aging on a cellular level.

Our research is not the first to show than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear down the body – literally “getting under the skin” to affect health.

Black Americans live sicker lives and die younger than other racial or ethnic groups. The experience of constant and accumulating stress due to racism throughout an individual’s lifetime can wear and tear down the body – literally “getting under the skin” to affect health

These findings highlight how stress from racism, particularly experienced early in life, can affect the mental and physical health disparities seen among Black Americans.

 

Why it matters

As news stories of Black American women, men and children being killed due to racial injustice persist, our research on the effects of racism continue to have significant implications.

COVID-19 has been that are due to factors like poverty, unemployment and lack of access to health care.

In 2019, the as having a profound impact on the health of children, adolescents, emerging adults and their families. Our findings support this conclusion – and show the need for society to truly reflect on the lifelong impact racism can have on a Black child’s ability to prosper in the U.S.

 

How we do the work

The , established in 1996 at Iowa State University and the University of Georgia, is looking at how stress, neighborhood characteristics and other factors affect Black American parents and their children over a lifetime. Participants were recruited from rural, suburban and metropolitan communities. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this research is the largest study of African American families in the U.S., with .
Researchers collected data – including self-reported questionnaires on experiences of racial discrimination and depressive symptoms – every two to three years. In 2015, the team started taking blood samples, too, to assess participants’ risks for heart disease and diabetes, as well as test for biomarkers that predict the early onset of these diseases.

We utilized a compared with their chronological age. We found that some young people were older at a cellular level than would have been expected based on their chronological age. Racial discrimination accounted for much of this variation, suggesting that .

Our study shows how vital it is to think about how mental and physical health difficulties are interconnected.

 

What’s next

Some of the next steps for our work include focusing more closely on the accelerated aging process. We also will look at resiliency and early life interventions that could possibly offset and prevent health decline among Black Americans.

Due to COVID-19, the next scheduled blood sample collection has been delayed until at least spring 2021. The original children from this study will be in their mid- to late 30s and might possibly be experiencing chronic illnesses at this age due, in part, to accelerated aging.

With continued research, my colleagues and I hope to identify ways to interrupt the harmful effects of racism so that Black lives matter and are able to thrive.The Conversation

, Assistant Professor of Psychology,

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

 

Related Posts

Get a job- Insomniac Games is hiring a Content Artist 2

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Content Artist, Insomniac Games

Location: Burbank, California

The Content Artist is responsible for assisting the Marketing/Community and Art departments with all aspects of marketing video creation and post production for our projects.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following:

    Blind Squirrel Games acquires Colombia-based Distributed Development

    Developer Blind Squirrel Games has expanded into Colombia by purchasing the service-based Distributed Development for an undisclosed amount. Come from South African Online Casinos

    The new offshoot, rebranded to Blind Squirrel Colombia, will initially focus on co-developing games for its parent company. Eric Herrera will continue to lead as its studio director, and the team is expected to expand "significantly" to 25-30 employees by the end of 2025.

    In the announcement, Herrera noted his team previously worked with Blind Squirrel on projects such as Age of Darkness: Final Stand's multiplayer. To him, those team-ups "made clear that formally joining forces would be mutually beneficial. Beyond our studio initiatives, we also look forward to also playing a central role in nurturing and growing talen…

Get a job- Join Jackbox Games as a Sr. Gameplay Engineer 2

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Senior Gameplay Engineer, Jackbox Games

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Jackbox Games is looking for a Senior Gameplay Engineer to join our team in Chicago! (Though currently, we are all working from home.)

Who Are We?

Jackbox is a small game studio (~45 people) best known for our Jackbox Party Pack franchise: a set of five social party games released every fall. Since 2014, our games–like Quiplash, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party– have been f…

Get a job- Insomniac Games is hiring a Character Technical Director

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Character Technical Director, Insomniac Games

Location: Durham, North Carolina Come from South African Online Casinos

Insomniac Games is looking for a versatile Character TD, for our studio in North Carolina! You’d be responsible for creating character setups, including the rigging of various heroes, enemies, weapons, vehicles and props, and for support of the Animators and others with scripts and tools. If you’r…

Baldur's Gate 3 Players Have Collectively Downloaded Over 50 Million Mods

Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 was a megahit for 2023, earning several Game of the Year awards including the top prize for GameSpot. While the game doesn’t need any mods to be played or even enhanced since the mainline story itself is so rich and elaborate, that didn’t stop players from downloading mods by the millions.

“Together, you’ve downloaded more than 50 million mods since Patch 7 introduced modding support,” the game’s official Twitter account posted Wednesday Come from South African Online Casinos . “Apparently 10,000 of those downloads were you renaming Withers to Bone Daddy. So, uh, glad we could facilitate that.”

After months of playing with unofficial mods, Patch 7 of the game included, among other things, an official modding toolkit for Mac and console and quickly racked up over 15 million downloads. Players uploaded over 1,000 mods by the start of October. Larian even released an animated short for …

Benedict Cumberbatch Gives Avengers 5 Update, Reveals A Surprising Reason He Likes Playing Doctor Strange

Oscar-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch has shared a key piece of news about the next Avengers movie Come from South African Online Casinos . In a video for Netflix about his new miniseries Eric, Cumberbatch teased that his MCU character, Doctor Strange, will appear in the next Avengers film and it might start shooting relatively soon. Cumberbatch also spoke about how playing Doctor Strange gives him the financial freedom to explore “less commercial” projects.

“I am very much looking forward to Avengers next year, which is cooking up a storm,” he said. It would be not surprising at all to learn that Doctor Strange is in Avengers 5 after it was reportedly recently that the film could feature a whopping 60 MCU characters. In terms of his “next year” comment, that’s likely in reference to when filming may begin on the 2026 movie.

Cumberbatch went on to say that he feels an “immense” joy playing Doctor…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *