Racism and Health: Evidence and Needed Research

By David R. Williams, Jourdyn A. Lawrence, Brigette A. Davis. Annual Review of Public Health, 2019

1,932 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In recent decades, there has been remarkable growth in scientific research examining the multiple ways in which racism can adversely affect health. This interest has been driven in part by the striking persistence of racial/ethnic inequities in health and the empirical evidence that indicates that socioeconomic factors alone do not account for racial/ethnic inequities in health. Racism is considered a fundamental cause of adverse health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and racial/ethnic inequities in health. This article provides an overview of the evidence linking the primary domains of racism – structural racism, cultural racism and individual-level discrimination – to mental and physical health outcomes. For each mechanism, we describe key findings and identify priorities for future research. We also discuss evidence for interventions to reduce racism and needed research to advance knowledge in this area.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f5c282326822c5c1cca05a49940024480948e09c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. Nancy E. Adler
2. D. Chae
3. G. Gee
4. Megan M. Patton-López

In Health

1. Nancy E. Adler
2. D. Chae
3. G. Gee
4. Megan M. Patton-López
5. Stéphane Côté

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Daphna Shohamy
2. D. Bassett
3. D. Chae
4. G. Gee

Citations in the corpus

• The social determinants of mental health and disorder: evidence, prevention and recommendations (2024, background): “Racial discrimination involves major events such as experi­ encing interpersonal racism, exclusion from labour markets, and police harassment 159,160 .”
• Race and ethnicity, gender, and age on perceived threats and fear of COVID-19: Evidence from two national data sources (2020, neutral): “Furthermore, on average, historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups have higher rates of chronic diseases and death when compared to their White counterparts (Phelan & Link, 2015; Williams et al., 2019).”
• Exploring U.S. Shifts in Anti-Asian Sentiment with the Emergence of COVID-19 (2020, background): “In this way, cultural racism is systemic and produces an environment where institutional and individual-level discrimination can thrive [14], both of which have been associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes [6,15].”
• Racial and ethnic imbalance in neuroscience reference lists and intersections with gender (2020, background): “Northwestern University Law Review, 113(3):505–586.”
• Social Determinants of Health and Diabetes: A Scientific Review (2020, background): “of society impacting diabetes incidence (296,297).”