Narratives of Stress in Health Meanings of African Americans in Lake County, Indiana

• In Event: Cultural Approaches to Health Communication

Abstract

Research has documented that across the life course, African Americans bear an unequal burden of disease compared to other racial groups. In spite of the widespread acknowlegement of racial health disparities, the voices of African Americans, their articulations of health and local etiologies of health disparities are limited. In this article, we highlight the important role of Communication scholarship to understand the everyday enactment of health disparities. We used the culture-centered approach to co-construct narratives of health with African Americans residents of Lake County, Indiana, a region characterized by the poor health status and poverty of its African American population. Our participants’ co-constructed narratives implicate the omnipresence of stress and its impact on their health. These narratives identified social and structural sources of stress, and articulated resistive coping strategies. As an everyday enactment of health disparity, participants narratives were entry points to developing local theoretical and practical knowledge around health.

Authors

• Mohan Jyoti Dutta, National U of Singapore

• Rati Kumar, Central Connecticut State University

• Agaptus Anaele, Ohio

• Shaunak Sastry, University of Cincinnati

• Sydney J Dillard, DePaul U

• Uttaran Dutta, Arizona State U

• Christina L Jones, U of Wisconsin-Whitewater

• Christine Mary Spinetta, U of Texas-Pan American

• William Bart Collins, Purdue U