Contextualizing Racial and Ethnic Health Inequalities

• In Event: 322 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Race, Ethnicity and Health

Abstract

Health researchers across a range of disciplines have adopted the general social constructionist perspective—that views race and ethnicity as historically contingent and tied to cultural, economic, and social context—when dealing with racial and ethnic health disparities. However, race and ethnicity are rarely operationalized in a way that reflects this contextual conceptualization. This gap between theory and research design hinders our understanding of macro-structural influences on disparity patterns and obfuscates causal mechanisms. This paper advocates a more considered incorporation of social context into research design, and offers three promising lines of inquiry. First, post-migration trajectories may shed light on the experiences of adapting to an unfamiliar racialized structural context. Second, historical comparison can highlight shifting racial/ethnic definitions in the context of the fundamental cause theory of health inequalities. Finally, an emerging field of cross-national comparison of health inequalities may point to upstream political, economic, and social context in shaping health patterns.

Author

• Elyas Bakhtiari, Boston University