By
Mallary Jean Tenore When I think about racism, I think about emotional pain, ignorance, the need for equality. So when I recently saw the words "racism" and "health care" clumped together, I wondered why.
In a recent Google Alert for the term "racism," I came across
a National Public Radio piece about a new documentary series titled
"Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" The documentary looks at the ways that racism affects our health. Many minorities, the documentary says, have greater health issues than their white counterparts. The documentary cites several examples of this, including
one about black mothers in the U.S. being far more likely to have premature births and low-birth weight babies than white women.
Lou Smith, co-executive producer of the documentary, said during the NPR interview that this problem is not innate to being black, but rather to the conditions of race that black people live with.
His colleague Larry Adelman, creator and executive producer of the documentary, agrees. "I think the everyday experience of racism ... puts one's body on alert, which means it triggers the stress response. Your heart beats faster, your blood pressure rises, blood sugar rises," Adelman said during the interview. "What scientists are finding is that if that stress response is turned on, even at a low level ... it weathers the body and puts you at risk for all the chronic diseases."
"Unnatural Causes" profiles the Hispanic community as well, saying that Hispanics who cross the border into the U.S. are generally poorer, but healthier, than the average American. The longer they are in the U.S., the quicker their health erodes. Hispanics are 1.5 times more likely to be obese and to have high blood pressure, the documentary says, than when they arrived.
Living conditions and discrimination have also affected southern Arizona's Pima and Tohono O'odham Indians, who have one of the
highest rates of Type-2 diabetes in the world, according to the documentary. The reason why is startling: During the 20th century, the Pima's agricultural economy was disrupted by the diversion of river water to upstream white settlements. Tribes became poor as a result, and healthy foods like cholla buds, wild game and tepary beans were replaced by foods that fuel diabetes -- white flour, processed cheese, lard and canned foods.
There are plenty more examples like this that may be playing out in your own communities. Talk to the minorities in your coverage area. How has the discrimination they've faced factor into their overall health, if at all?
Add in the fact that there is a strong association...
