Historically, the US immigration system (ie, institutions, agencies, and laws) has served the goals and principles of white supremacy through its treatment of globally displaced people and this appears to have continued through the COVID pandemic. Yet, the implications for immigrant health are not routinely addressed in mainstream public health discourse, and especially so in regard to public health disasters. This study conducted a series of focus groups with participants from social justice organizations working with immigrants, migrants, undocumented persons, refugees, persons seeking asylum, and persons detained in immigration jails to collect stories on how the immigration system undermined efforts to control the spread of COVID-19 and exacerbated health inequity within immigrant jails and across related community contexts during the pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRationale: Immigrants represent a rapidly growing proportion of the population, yet the many ways in which structural inequities, including racism, xenophobia, and sexism, influence their health remains largely understudied. Perspectives from immigrant women can highlight intersectional dimensions of structural gendered racism and the ways in which racial and gender-based systems of structural oppression interact.
Objective: This study aims to show the multilevel manifestations of structural gendered racism in the health experiences of immigrant women living in New York City.
Background: Most studies capturing the health effects of police violence focus on directly impacted individuals, but a burgeoning field of study is capturing the indirect, community-level health effects of policing. Few empirical studies have examined neighbourhood-level policing, a contextual and racialised gendered stressor, in relation to preterm birth risk among Black and other racially minoritised people.
Methods: We spatially linked individual birth records (2017-2019) in Seattle, Washington (n=25 909) with geocoded data on police stops for three exposure windows: year before pregnancy, first and second trimester.
Introduction: Screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the clinical setting is set to become more commonplace with continued efforts to reimburse clinicians for screening. However, an examination of disparities in ACEs screening and related attitudes and beliefs is needed.
Methods: Using the 2021 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), this study examined if several measures of socioeconomic status, access to care and identities were associated with 3 outcomes: 1) getting screened for ACEs by a clinician; 2) beliefs about the importance of screening and 3) satisfaction with efforts to address the impacts of ACEs.
The conventional use of racial categories in health research naturalizes "race" in problematic ways that ignore how racial categories function in service of a White-dominated racial hierarchy. In many respects, racial labels are based on geographic designations. For instance, "Asians" are from Asia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although surveillance systems used to mitigate disasters serve essential public health functions, communities of color have experienced disproportionate harms (eg, criminalization) as a result of historic and enhanced surveillance.
Methods: To address this, we developed and piloted a novel, equity-based scoring system to evaluate surveillance systems regarding their potential and actual risk of adverse effects on communities made vulnerable through increased exposure to policing, detention/incarceration, deportation, and disruption of access to social services or public resources. To develop the scoring system, we reviewed the literature and surveyed an expert panel on surveillance to identify specific harms (eg, increased policing) that occur through surveillance approaches.
Introduction: Equity-oriented efforts to mitigate and prevent COVID-related disparities are hindered due to methodological limitations of the categorization of racial and ethnic groups, including Arabs and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) communities, which remain invisible in national data collection efforts. This study highlights the disparities in COVID-related outcomes in Toronto, Canada and supports ongoing calls to collect public health data among MENA communities in the United States.
Methods: Data on racial/ethnic identity and hospitalizations were collected by the Toronto Public Health (TPH) of the Ontario Ministry of Public Health Case between May 20, 2020, and September 30, 2021 from people with a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19.
Am J Public Health
November 2022
The Supreme Court decision to overturn and the growing onslaught of state laws that criminalize abortion are part of a long history of maintaining White supremacy through reproductive control of Black and socially marginalized lives. As public health continues to recognize structural racism as a public health crisis and advances its measurement, it is imperative to explicate the connection between abortion criminalization and White supremacy. In this essay, we highlight how antiabortion policies uphold White supremacy and offer concrete strategies for addressing abortion criminalization in structural racism measures and public health research and practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Racism persists, underscoring the need to rapidly document the perspectives and experiences of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) groups as well as marginalized populations (eg, formerly incarcerated people) during pandemics.
Objective: This methods paper offers a model for using Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) and related critical methodologies (ie, feminist and decolonizing methods) to inform the conceptualization, methods, and dissemination of qualitative research undertaken in response to the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.
Sample: Using purposive snowball sampling, we identified organizations involved with health equity and social justice advocacy among BIPOC and socially marginalized populations.
Introduction: The general public was discussing racism and potential inequities in COVID-19 vaccinations among African Americans on Twitter before the first COVID-19 vaccine received emergency use authorization, but it is unclear how US state health departments (SHDs) were using Twitter to address the inequities. This study examines the frequency, content and timing of SHD tweets during the US rollout of the first SARS Co-V2 vaccine.
Methods: This was a prospective study of tweets posted from the official Twitter accounts of each of the 50 US SHDs and the DC health department from October 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021.
In 2020, the continuing murder of Black Americans by police officers received widespread media attention and sparked global outrage. Public health responses to these events focused on discrimination by police and structural racism in broader society. However, police violence is but one of many forms of racialized violence propagated by structural racism and anti-Black racism in particular.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Religious-based hate crimes are on the rise worldwide. However, the relationship of religious discrimination on health and well-being, especially earlier on the lifecourse, is largely understudied. This study examines the prevalence of religious discrimination and the relationship it has on social-emotional adjustment and sleep outcomes among a diverse sample of students in Australia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Racial Ethn Health Disparities
June 2022
Objective: To examine the prevalence of young childrens' reported experiences of racial discrimination and to assess whether discriminatory experiences vary by gender, religion and country of birth.
Methods: Data came from Speak Out Against Racism (SOAR), a cross-sectional study of 4664 public school students in grades 5-9 in two Australian states in 2017. An adaption of the Adolescent Discrimination Distress Index (ADDI), as a measure of discrimination, was used across four Indigenous and ethnic categories (Indigenous, Asian and non-Asian visible minorities, Anglo/European).
Racism is a key driver of the social, political, and economic injustices that cause and maintain health inequities. Over centuries and across continents, racism has become deeply ingrained within societies. Therefore, we believe that it is our professional and ethical obligation as scientists, and public health scholars specifically, to address racism head on in order to ameliorate racialized health disparities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To evaluate associations between spousal caregiving and mental and physical health among older adults in Mexico.
Methods: Data come from the Mexican Health & Aging Study, a national population-based study of adults ≥50 years and their spouses (2001-2015). We compared outcomes for spousal caregivers to outcomes for those whose spouses had difficulty with at least one basic or instrumental activity of daily living (I/ADL) but were not providing care; the control group conventionally includes all married respondents regardless of spouse's need for care.
Objective: To assess differences in health access and utilization among Middle Eastern American adults by White racial identity and citizenship.
Methods: Data from the 2011 to 2018 National Health Interview Surveys (N=1013) and survey-weighted logistic regression analyses compare Middle Eastern immigrants by race and citizenship on access and utilization of health care in the United States.
Results: White respondents had 71% lower odds of delaying care [adjusted odds ratio (AOR)=0.
Hopefulness is associated with better health and may be integral for stress adaptation and resilience. Limited research has prospectively examined whether hopefulness protects against physiological dysregulation or does so similarly for U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper explores the effects of a group-randomized controlled trial, Community Partners in Care (CPIC), on the development of interagency networks for collaborative depression care improvement between a community engagement and planning (CEP) intervention and a resources for services (RS) intervention that provided the same content solely via technical assistance to individual programs. Both interventions consisted of a diverse set of service agencies, including health, mental health, substance abuse treatment, social services, and community-trusted organizations such as churches and parks and recreation centers. Participants in the community councils for the CEP intervention reflected a range of agency leaders, staff, and other stakeholders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo assess how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) impacted changes in access and utilization of health care between groups by examining differences across groups of immigrants and by citizenship status. Data came from respondents of the 2011-2016 National Health Interview Survey aged 18 to 64 who were born outside of the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Depressed individuals may require help from different agencies to address health and social needs, but how such coordination occurs in under-resourced communities is poorly understood. This study sought to identify priorities of Latino and African American depressed clients, explore whether service providers understand client priorities, and describe how providers address them.
Methods: Between October 2014 and February 2015, we interviewed 104 clients stratified by depression history and 50 representatives of different programs in health and social community agencies who participated in Community Partners in Care, a cluster-randomized trial of coalition-building approaches to delivering depression quality improvement programs.
Asian Americans are understudied in health research and often aggregated into one homogenous group, thereby disguising disparities across subgroups. Cambodian Americans, one of the largest refugee communities in the United States, may be at high risk for adverse health outcomes. This study compares the health status and healthcare experiences of Cambodian American refugees and immigrants.
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