Journal Article

Race and Ethnicity in Public Health Research: Models to Explain Health Disparities

Oths, Kathryn S., Gravlee, Clarence C., Dressler, William W.

2005

Overview

The description and explanation of racial and ethnic health disparities are major initiatives of the public health research establishment. Black Americans suffer on nearly every measure of health in relation to white Americans. Five theoretical models have been proposed to explain these disparities: a racial-genetic model, a health-behavior model, a socioeconomic status model, a psychosocial stress model, and a structural-constructivist model. We psychosocial review literature on health disparities, emphasizing research on low birth weight and high blood pressure. The psychosocial stress model and the structural-constructivist model offer greatest promise to explain disparities. In future research, theoretical elaboration and operational specificity are needed to distinguish among three distinct factors: (a) genetic variants contributing to disease risk; (b) ethnoracial or folk racial categories masquerading as biology; and (c) ethnic group membership. Such elaboration is necessary to move beyond the conflation of these three distinct constructs that characterizes much of current research.

• Publisher: Annual Reviews,Annual Reviews, Inc
• Subject: African Americans / Anthropology / Biological Factors / Biology / Birth weight / Black White Differences / Black white relations / Blood pressure / Cardiovascular disease / Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore / Deaths / Elaboration / Ethnic differences / Ethnic groups / Ethnicity / Ethnology / Genetics / Health / Health behavior / Health care / Health care inequality / Health disparities / Health initiatives / Health problems / Health research / Health services / Heart failure / Hypertension / Inequality / Initiatives / Literature reviews / Low birth weight / Lung cancer / Manslaughter / Medical genetics / Medical research / Membership / Mental health / Minority & ethnic groups / Modeling / Population genetics / Psychological Stress / Psychosocial Factors / Public Health / Race / Racial differences / Racial inequality / Racism / Rates / Skin color / Socioeconomic status / Status / Stress / Traditional and modern medicine; public health / Traditional sciences and medicine / United States of America / Variants