Minority Health Conference to Look at Role of Racism in Disease

Posted on June 6, 2007

“Does racism make us sick?” is the question addressed by the 13th annual Summer Public Health Research Video Conference on Minority Health, sponsored by UNC’s School of Public Health’s Minority Health Project and the University’s Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.

The interactive conference will be broadcast live online from 2 to 4 p.m. on June 25 from the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. Registered satellite downlink sites are available in more than 20 states. Participation is free, but registration is required. Registration information and a list of videoconference sites are available online.

Racism and discrimination are important issues to many sectors of society, said Anissa Vines, research assistant professor of epidemiology and associate director of the UNC Program on Ethnicity, Culture and Health Outcomes. In recent years, public health professionals have become more aware of the role of race in health outcomes following the publication of studies establishing racism as a factor in mental health disorders, preterm births, cardiovascular disease and other health problems.

“Public health research continues to document relationships between racism and disease,” Vines said. “Racism is one of the strongest determinants of social inequalities in society. It has structured society in a way that people of color are often predisposed to social conditions that cause chronic stress.

“We hope the conference can entice people to engage in open dialogues about how racism can affect health, and to seek opportunities to eliminate its presence in society,” Vines said.

Those participating in the conference can expect an up-to-date conceptual framework for understanding the effects of racism on health plus highlights from current research, said Victor Schoenbach, associate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and principal investigator of the Minority Health Project.

Because the audience will be broad and diverse, presentations should be understandable to members of the general public as well, Schoenbach said. Conference speakers will suggest new ways of looking at familiar problems.

Conference speakers are:

• Luisa N. Borrell, assistant professor, department of epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
• Gilbert C. Gee, assistant professor, department of health behavior and health education, University of Michigan School of Public Health.
• Karina Walters, William B. and Ruth Gerberding Endowed Professor, University of Washington School of Social Work.
• David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, department of society, human development and health, Harvard University School of Public Health.

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