Black women who reported experiencing racism may be at an increased risk of having a stroke, a new study finds.
Participants who said they experienced racism in employment, housing and interactions with police had an estimated 38% higher chance of experiencing all types of strokes compared to Black women who didn’t perceive experiencing racism, the study found.
The study, published under Boston University’s Black Women’s Health Study (BHWS), followed 48,375 Black women from 1997 to 2019 who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at the beginning of the study. Over the 22-year period, the study identified 1,664 cases of Black women who had strokes.
Black adults are 50% more likely to have a stroke compared to white adults, and Black women are two times more likely to have a stroke than white women, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
While experts have cited factors like obesity or hypertension as the cause for such high rates, the BWHS aimed to show that potential causes from environmental and social factors that individuals can’t change — like racism — should also be considered, according to Dr. Julie Palmer, director of the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University and a co-author of the study.
“Our whole aim is really to provide information that will be useful so that fewer people will have major illnesses,” Palmer said.
Boston University’s BHWS was initiated in 1995 in response to the “very little research” being done on Black women’s health, Palmer said. Inspired by the Nurses’ Health Study, BHWS collected data from 59,000 Black women throughout the country and followed up with them every two years to learn about any changes in their health. While the study did not include other races of women, the fact that the study focuses only on Black women is more of a strength than a limitation, because experiences of discrimination may vary for each group, said Shanshan Sheehy, an assistant professor…
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