How Cumulative Risks Warrant a Shift in Our Approach to Racial Health Disparities

The Case of Lead, Stress, and Hypertension

Blacks have persistently higher rates of high blood pressure, or hypertension, compared to Whites, resulting in higher health costs and mortality rates.

Recent research has shown that social and environmental factors—such as high levels of stress and exposure to lead—may explain racial disparities in hypertension. Based on these findings, these researchers recommend a fundamental shift in approaches to health disparities to focus on these sorts of cumulative risks and health effects.

Federal and state agencies and research institutions should develop strategic plans to learn more about these connections and apply the broader findings to policies to reduce health disparities.

Health Affairs Issue Examines Causes and Consequences of Health Disparities

  1. 1 Where Health Disparities Begin
  2. 2 Raising Low 'Patient Activation' Rates Among Hispanic Immigrants May Equal Expanded Coverage in Reducing Access Disparities
  3. 3 How Cumulative Risks Warrant a Shift in Our Approach to Racial Health Disparities
  4. 4 Rising Closures of Hospital Trauma Centers Disproportionately Burden Vulnerable Populations
  5. 5 A Regional Health Collaborative Formed by NewYork-Presbyterian Aims to Improve the Health of a Largely Hispanic Community
  6. 6 Collection of Race and Ethnicity Data by Health Plans Has Grown Substantially, but Opportunities Remain to Expand Efforts
  7. 7 Undocumented Immigrants, Left Out of Health Reform, Likely to Continue to Grow as Share of the Uninsured

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