Social and Cultural Context of Racial Inequalities in Health

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Clarence C. Gravlee and Dr. Christopher McCarty will undertake research on the social and cultural influences on racial inequalities in health. Some social scientists view race as a cultural construct, not a biological reality. But this view is coming under increasing scrutiny, as medical researchers seek to explain racial inequalities in health in terms of genetic differences. This development challenges social scientists to clarify how race exists as a social and cultural phenomenon that has force in people's lives and, indeed, one that has biological consequences. The driving research question is why African Americans suffer disproportionately from hypertension, or chronic high blood pressure. This problem is a key test case, because it is often attributed to unknown genetic differences between racially defined groups. This project tests the alternative view that social and cultural factors account for the pattern of hypertension among people of African descent. In particular, it seeks to identify the contributions of social structure and the experience of culturally defined stressors to blood pressure variation among African Americans. The study combines (a) ethnography to explore how class and color shape the meaning of everyday social interaction and (b) methods of social network analysis to examine how the social structure in which individuals are embedded shapes exposure to racism and other social stressors. The research will be conducted among African Americans in Tallahassee, FL, a city with a large and socioeconomically diverse African-American community, as well as a history of racial struggle and civil rights activism. The exploratory phase involves participant observation and two rounds of ethnographic interviewing (N = 48 in each round). The explanatory phase will involve a representative survey (N = 350) of adult African Americans in Tallahassee to test the associations between social network characteristics, the experience of culturally defined stressors, and blood pressure variation, above and beyond known risk factors for high blood pressure. This study contributes an anthropological perspective to national discussions about race and racism. It develops a novel application of social network analysis and builds on efforts to integrate the social and biological sciences. In particular, it will identify the biological consequences of racism and contribute to our understanding of how social and cultural processes become embodied in health.