3275 - Social Climate Embodied: Linking Discrimination to Health Outcomes

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

A burgeoning body of research links exposure to racism, sexism, anti-LBGT sentiment, and the intersections of these three, to negative population health outcomes. For example: (1) disproportionate police surveillance has been linked to negative health outcomes among African–Americans, (2) legal polices disadvantaging gays, and lesbians have been linked to negative health outcomes in these sexual minority populations and (3) workplace sexism has been linked to negative health outcomes for women.

New research in this area has identified mechanisms underlying the relationship between discrimination and negative health outcomes by documenting how such social forces “get under the skin.” Understanding and identifying these mechanisms helps to elucidate social processes that link discrimination to negative health outcomes at the population level. In addition, new work in this area has pushed sociological understanding of discrimination by seriously analyzing the effects of discrimination at the structural and institutional levels on negative health outcomes. Examples discrimination at the structural and institutional levels investigated in recent research include racialized policing, discriminatory legislation, and problematic racial categorization by official government offices such as the Census bureau. This panel will bring together researchers on the cutting edge of this work to present their findings as well as to discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by work that links discrimination to negative population health outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Special Sessions

Session Organizer

• Catherine J. Taylor, Indiana University

Panelists

• Nancy López, University of New Mexico

• Abigail A. Sewell, Emory University

• Mark Louis Hatzenbuehler, Columbia University

Discussant

• Bruce G. Link, University of California-Riverside