Structural Racism and Health Stratification: Connecting Theory to Measurement.
Less than 1% of studies on racialized health inequities have empirically examined their root cause: structural racism. Moreover, there has been a disconnect between the conceptualization and measurement of structural racism. This study advances the field by (1) distilling central tenets of theories of structural racism to inform measurement approaches, (2) conceptualizing U.S. states as racializing institutional actors shaping health, (3) developing a novel latent measure of structural racism in states, (4) using multilevel models to quantify the association between structural racism and five individual-level health outcomes among respondents from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 9,020) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (N = 308,029), and (5) making our measure of structural racism publicly available to catalyze research. Results show that structural racism is consistently associated with worse health for Black people but not White people. We conclude by highlighting this study's contributions (theoretical, methodological, and substantive) and important avenues for future research on the topic.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- White
- Systemic Racism
- Public Health
- Humans
- Health Status Disparities
- Black or African American
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 4410 Sociology
- 1701 Psychology
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- White
- Systemic Racism
- Public Health
- Humans
- Health Status Disparities
- Black or African American
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 4410 Sociology
- 1701 Psychology
- 1117 Public Health and Health Services