ROCHESTER — In the United States, Black residents are at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease compared to white residents. This is not due to biological differences between racial groups, but rather because of racism and the ways that it is intermeshed in American society and institutions, said Sean Phelan, professor of health services research in Mayo Clinic's Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. The challenge, though, is how to measure the broad, overarching effects of racism on people's health.
Phelan said there are lots of ways to study the health impacts of interpersonal racism — interactions between individual people, such as a medical professional showing bias against their Black patient — but measuring racism's wider reach is more difficult. "Really, (there's) not very good measures of institutional-level discrimination or prejudice, things like how an institution's policies and procedures are developed to benefit one group at the expense of another group," he said. Phelan is part of a group of Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota researchers who recently published a framework for future research on how racism impacts health.
The goal is to better understand how racism affects people's health at a broader level and, based on that understanding, to create solutions that positively impact Black Americans' cardiovascular health. "We think it'll help us kind of increase the scope of intervention ..
. ways that might have a wider d.
