The stressful experiences of racial discrimination and prejudice have been shown to adversely affect the physical and mental health status of African Americans. Coupled with daily stressful events, many African Americans encounter the additional stress of living daily in a state of heightened awareness of their """"""""blackness"""""""". As a consequence, experiences of and responses to racism may increase the disease risk for African Americans. Racism, like other stressors, may elicit a biological response through the activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis that leads to an increase in the stress hormone, cortisol. This increase in cortisol levels is believed to cause adipose tissue to be directed to the intra-abdominal region. Intra-abdominal fat accumulation or visceral obesity is widely accepted as a risk factor for adverse health outcomes such as cardiovascular and arthritis. To examine the relationship between racism as a chronic stressor and visceral obesity, a cross-sectional study of African American women aged 35-49, who are participants in the Uterine Fibroid Study (UFS), is proposed. Women in the UFS have been randomly selected from a large urban health maintenance organization. African American women who have completed a clinic visit, telephone interview, and mail questionnaire on demographics, lifestyle, and health will be included in the study. A letter will be mailed to the women explaining the study and providing information on informed consent. Following the letter, the women will be called and invited to participate in a 20-minute telephone interview about their perceptions of racism and their emotional and behavioral responses to racism. To validate the questionnaire data on stress, blood and urine specimens will be assayed for the stress hormone, cortisol. Visceral obesity will be measured both continuously and categorically using the waist-to-hip ratio. Multiple linear and logistic regression modeling are proposed to examine the proposed relationship while controlling for potential risk factors such as physical activity, body mass index, smoking, alcohol, and socioeconomic status. It is important that we explore the stressful experiences of and responses to racism so that effective-race specific stress-management strategies can be employed. Also, determining the extent to which racism may influence visceral obesity will be the first step toward understanding and ultimately reducing the high morbidity and mortality associated with this outcome.
| Vines, Anissa I; Ta, Myduc; Esserman, Denise A (2010) The association between self-reported major life events and the presence of uterine fibroids. Womens Health Issues 20:294-8 |
| Vines, Anissa I; Baird, Donna D (2009) Stress of caring for children: the role of perceived racism. J Natl Med Assoc 101:156-60 |
| Vines, Anissa I; Baird, Donna Day; Stevens, June et al. (2007) Associations of abdominal fat with perceived racism and passive emotional responses to racism in African American women. Am J Public Health 97:526-30 |
| Vines, Anissa I; Baird, Donna D; McNeilly, Maya et al. (2006) Social correlates of the chronic stress of perceived racism among Black women. Ethn Dis 16:101-7 |
| Vines, A I; McNeilly, M D; Stevens, J et al. (2001) Development and reliability of a Telephone-Administered Perceived Racism Scale (TPRS): a tool for epidemiological use. Ethn Dis 11:251-62 |
