Feature Channels: Race and Ethnicity

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What happens when white video game players see themselves as black characters in a violent game?A new study suggests some disturbing answers.

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A Mayo Clinic study reviewed data on more than 290,000 men with prostate cancer from the past 20 years and found that African-American men are at increased risk for poorer survival rate following prostate cancer treatment compared to other minority groups. The study was recently published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

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A new study involving researchers from UC Davis and four other National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers reveals important barriers that limit minority group participation in cancer clinical trials, findings that will be used to refine and launch more effective strategies to assure that more minorities benefit from clinical trials.

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The study, “Latinas with Elevated Fasting Plasma Glucose: An Analysis Using NHANES 2009-2010 Data,” led by Dr. Shiela M. Strauss, Associate Professor, New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN), points to the urgent need for alternate sites of opportunity for diabetes screenings. There is also a need for effective and culturally sensitive follow-up care and case management. The study appears in Hispanic Health Care International, Vol.12:1, March 2014.

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Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

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New UT Austin study finds childhood adversity launches a lifelong process of relationship and health disadvantage for African-American men.

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A new University of Virginia psychology study has found that a sample of mostly white American children – as young as 7, and particularly by age 10 – report that black children feel less pain than white children.

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Greater childhood adversity helps to explain why black men are less healthy than white men, and some of this effect appears to operate through childhood adversity’s enduring influence on the relationships black men have as adults, according to a new study.

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Results from the largest health study of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. to date reveal a unique set of health risk factors and provide insight into the prevalence of certain diseases like diabetes and hypertension for this diverse population.

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Blacks may be twice as likely as whites to develop multiple myeloma because they are more likely to have a precursor condition known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS), a Mayo Clinic study has found. Not only is MGUS more common in blacks, but the type seen in the black population is also more apt to have features associated with a higher risk of progression to full-blown multiple myeloma, a cancer of a type of white blood cell in bone marrow.

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The Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), the landmark research study of Hispanic/Latino health funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has released initial findings that show significant variations in disease prevalence and health behaviors among groups with different backgrounds.

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African-Americans spend more time than any other group getting to work and in some cases spend about 15 minutes more a day than whites commuting, according to research by Virginia Parks, associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

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People who identify as homosexual have several health disparities relative to their heterosexual peers, finds a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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For Kimberly Jade Norwood, Washington University in St. Louis professor of law and African & African American studies, the topic of her newly released book, Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Postracial America (Routledge, 2013), strikes close to home.

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To address what they call persistent gender, racial, and ethnic bias in academia, scholars at Skidmore College and Yale and Leiden universities have recommended specific, rigorous interventions that lead to positive outcomes.

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This year, Black History Month converges with the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement, and the nation's notable gains in equality give us much to celebrate. But equality in health and access to care continue to be areas of serious concern.

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Skin cancer is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage in people of color, which can make it more difficult to treat. A new study provides recommendations for the prevention and early detection of skin cancer in people of color based on a comprehensive review of available data.

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Two surprising risk factors – diminished lung function and low serum potassium levels - appear to have nearly the same impact as obesity in explaining why African-Americans are disproportionately prone to developing type 2 diabetes, researchers at Duke Medicine report.

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African American women today are almost twice as likely to deliver a preterm baby as white, Hispanic or Asian women in the US - a disparity that medical conditions, socioeconomic status, access to prenatal care and health behaviors haven’t been able to fully account for. Two new studies explore the complex relationship between race, stress and inflammation and potential impacts on pregnancy in the hope of reducing preterm births and infant mortality, and improving maternal mental health.

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Since the 1970s, the frequency and use of pain relief during childbirth – and most especially the use of epidural analgesia during labor – has increased dramatically. Reports on epidural rates range from 47 percent to as high as 76 percent of vaginal births, while between 39 percent and 56 percent of women use narcotic analgesics – including drugs like Fentanyl – via IV for managing labor and delivery pain. Only about 14 percent of women, the literature reveals, use no pharmacologic method to relieve childbirth pain.

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Robust partnerships between rural community health education centers and academic health care institutions can make substantial strides toward addressing race-, income- and geographically-based health disparities in underserved communities by empowering both the community and leading University institutions.

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Peter Rodriguez, senior associate dean for degree programs and chief diversity officer, addressed students, faculty and staff members who gathered at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business First Coffee celebration in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with these words:

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A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that rural residents have experienced smaller gains in life expectancy than their urban counterparts and the gap continues to grow.

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UT professor King Davis is leading a project to digitize and preserve records from the archive of the world’s first mental institution for African Americans.

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African-American men incurred $341.8 billion in excess medical costs due to health inequalities between 2006 and 2009, and Hispanic men incurred an additional $115 billion over the four-year period, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study looks at the direct and indirect costs associated with health inequalities and projects the potential cost savings of eliminating these disparities for minority men in the U.S.

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─ University of Washington researchers Grant H. Blume and Mark C. Long have produced the first empirical estimates using national-level data to show the extent to which levels of affirmative action in college admissions decisions changed during the period of 1992 to 2004. Blume and Long’s study, “Changes in Levels of Affirmative Action in College Admissions in Response to Statewide Bans and Judicial Rulings,” was recently published online in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA), a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

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African American service members had higher incidence rates of hypertension compared to service members of other races and ethnicities despite equitable access to health care within the military health system, according to a new analysis by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC).

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UCLA researchers have found that minority patients and those of lower socioeconomic status are far more likely to have advanced thyroid cancer when they are diagnosed with the disease than white patients and those in higher economic brackets. In one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, the UCLA team looked at nearly 26,000 patients with well-differentiated thyroid cancer and analyzed the impact of race and socioeconomic factors on the stage of presentation, as well as patient survival rates. The study appears in the January issue of the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism.

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As perceived by both patients and doctors, the cosmetic results after "lumpectomy" for breast cancer differ for African-American versus Caucasian women, suggests a pilot study in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery—Global Open®, the official open-access medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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While weight loss surgery offers one of the best opportunities to improve health and reduce obesity related illnesses, the nearly 100,000 Americans who undergo bariatric surgery each year represent only a small fraction of people who are medically eligible for the procedure. Among those who have surgery, Caucasian Americans are twice as likely as African Americans to have weight loss surgery. On the surface, the data appear to signal racial disparity, but when researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center dug deeper to ask why this variation exists, the answer was more complicated.

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Nearly half of black males and almost 40 percent of white males in the U.S. are arrested by age 23, which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities. A new study released Monday (Jan. 6) in the journal Crime & Delinquency provides the first contemporary findings on how the risk of arrest varies across race and gender.

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Among Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, female, black, Asian and patients are substantially less likely to receive proven deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery to improve tremors and motor symptoms, according to a new report by a Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania researcher who identified considerable disparities among Medicare recipients receiving DBS for Parkinson's disease.

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The poor and minorities tend to suffer from poor sleep and chronic disease more often, but sleep does not appear to be a root cause of disease disparity, finds a new study in Ethnicity & Disease.

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Age at immigration and citizenship status may have health implications for immigrants, finds a new study in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

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Among African-American women with breast cancer, increased levels of the protein HSET were associated with worse breast cancer outcomes, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.

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Diabetes was associated with an increased risk for developing a type of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma, and this association was highest for Latinos, followed by Hawaiians, African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.

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Researchers have uncovered a potential biological factor that may contribute to disparities in prostate cancer incidence and mortality between African-American and non-Hispanic white men in the United States, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.

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Women with interruptions in health insurance coverage or with low income levels had a significantly increased likelihood of failing to receive breast cancer care that is in concordance with recommended treatment guidelines, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.

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Certain genetic alterations to the PAX gene family may be responsible for survival disparities seen between African-American and non-Latino white men with head and neck cancer, according to results presented here at the Sixth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held Dec. 6-9.

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Despite working in more routine and less autonomous jobs, having fewer close friends at work, and feeling less supported by their coworkers, blacks report significantly more positive emotions in the workplace than whites, according to a new study.

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Hopkins Nursing-led study finds that when compared with other neighborhoods and without regard to income, predominantly black neighborhoods have the most limited access to supermarkets and to the healthier foods such markets sell.

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African Americans with high blood pressure who reported experiencing racial discrimination had lower rates of adherence to their blood pressure medication, finds a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

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A large study co-authored by Dominic Raj, M.D., director of the division of nephrology and professor of medicine at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences., identifies factors that mediate differences in the progression of chronic kidney disease in order to reduce the excess burden of end-stage renal disease and its complications in black patients.

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Online classified ad shoppers respond less often and offer lower prices when a seller is black rather than white, finds a newly published study based on an elegant field experiment.

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Researchers find a genetic difference in blood clotting mechanisms, which could help explain some of the racial health disparity in heart disease.

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Black men, vastly overrepresented among the prison population, comprise a high proportion of HIV-positive inmates and pose an infection risk to other inmates as well as members of their communities once they’re released. While sex is prohibited in U.S. prisons, sexual encounters are commonplace and few inmates express concern about getting or spreading HIV, according to a study of incarcerated Black men by Tawandra Rowell-Cunsolo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare Science at the Columbia University School of Nursing.