Racism in America
Unfortunately, America continues to suffer from a large amount of racism all throughout the nation, and it seems to never get better. It seems that each day there is something that occurs that involves race. People continue to hope for a change day after day, to little to no avail. Whether it be at a place of employment, police, or even at school, race continues to be an issue. However, people still have hope, and continue to fight against racism each and every day.
Heart Disease in America
In America, heart disease is certainly a major issue. Heart disease is especially an issue in many low-income neighborhoods. The reason is, that many families have to rely on corner stores. These families rely on corner stores because they are too far away from an actual grocery store.
Therefore, they are unable to purchase the needed vegetables/fruits that they need to live a long healthy life. Many corner stores just have chips and other unhealthy items, and rarely do they have anything healthy. Therefore, this skyrockets the chance of these families having heart disease in the future, as well as obesity.
As prominent as this issue is in America, there are still many people that are fighting for change across the nation. The fact that there is still that hope, enables others to fight for the same issue as well. Therefore, the amount of people fighting this continues to grow over time.
Interpersonal Racism and its Correlation with Heart Disease
Interpersonal Racism has actually been studied quite a lot throughout recent years, and there has been a new finding. “Interpersonal racism experienced through employment, housing and interactions with police may increase the risk for heart disease in Black women, new research suggests,” mentions the American Heart Association. Therefore, Black women that endure racism in these locations, have a higher chance of developing heart disease than those who have not experienced such.
A more in-depth look at the statistics analyzes the correlation between the two. “Women in the highest quartile of perceived interpersonal racism in daily life had a 21% increased risk for incident CHD (HR = 1.21; 95% CI, 0.99-1.48; P for trend = .05) compared with women in the lowest quartile,” according to Healio. Therefore, as there has been research done on both ends, clearly those that have experienced racism have a higher chance of heart disease.
Will Researchers Look At Other Areas?
As of right now, it seems that researchers are just focusing on the primary type of heart disease, and its correlation with racism. In the future, researchers certainly plan on focusing their studies on different areas of the heart, to see what other diseases racism could spike.
It is certainly more than possible that racism could also cause other diseases unrelated to the heart. It could be somewhere else in the body, likely in the brain, as those type of comments certainly affects people mentally and physically.
Future Of Racism And Heart Disease
There is certainly a hope that racism could end in the nearest possible future, as we are all human and deserve respect no matter what. The fact that racism is still a thing in today’s day in age is truly a terrible thing, and it is something that should not be taken lightly.
There has to be more done to decrease the amount of racism that exists in the world today. Racism should have perished a long while ago. The world needs to work together to keep any type of racism at bay.
Written by David Loran Jr
Sources:
Healio: Interpersonal racism drives heart disease risk for Black women
U.S News: Racism Brings Worse Heart Health for Black Women
American Heart Association: Racism in employment, housing, police interactions may raise Black women’s heart disease risk
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Inset Image Courtesy of Angela’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License