Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Status and Stress among African American Adolescents

认识到社会不平等和压力在种族健康差异中发挥了作用，促使美国的许多生物医学研究人员使用“种族”作为社会地位差异的替代衡量标准。然而，这种做法强化了种族同质性的假设，并转移了对社会压力过程中重要的种族内部差异的注意。青年时期压力升高现在被认为是成人慢性疾病发展的重要前兆。因此，了解社会压力变化对非裔美国青少年的影响尤为重要，因为他们在以后的生活中患压力相关疾病的风险更高。文化人类学家的这篇论文研究将采用结构化的民族志技术，为伊利诺伊州芝加哥郊区的一个高中社区创建一个重要压力源——社会地位——的文化显著性测量。然后，该测量将用于将非裔美国青年的个人社会地位水平与身体和认知/情感压力测量联系起来。除了挑战在生物医学研究中过于简单地使用种族变量之外，该项目还将推进将文化、个体和生物现象联系起来的生物文化研究方法。更广泛的影响：健康方面的种族差异是美国的一个重大问题，导致许多非洲裔美国人的总体福祉和生活质量下降。虽然青少年压力显然与成人慢性疾病的发展有关，但黑人青年在健康差距和社会心理压力研究中的代表性相对不足。最近的证据表明，减轻压力可以显著降低非裔美国青年的血压。因此，识别与社会地位具体相关的压力过程，将有可能使预防和干预计划更加适合于满足这一高危群体的需求。此外，该项目还促进了年轻社会科学家的教育。

Recognition that social inequality and stress play a role in racial health disparities has spurred many biomedical researchers in the United States to use 'race' as a proxy measure of social status differences. However, this practice reinforces assumptions of racial homogeneity and deflects attention from important intra-racial variation in social stress processes. Elevated stress during youth is now recognized to be a significant precursor to the development of adult chronic disease. Thus, understanding the impact of social stress variation among African American adolescents, who are at increased risk for stress-related diseases later in life, is particularly important. This dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist will employ structured ethnographic techniques to create a culturally salient measure of one important stressor - social status - for a high school community in a suburb of Chicago, IL. This measure will then be used to relate individual levels of social status with physical and cognitive/emotional measures of stress among African American youth. In addition to challenging overly-simplistic uses of race variables in biomedical research, this project will advance biocultural research approaches that link cultural, individual, and biological phenomena. Broader Impacts:Racial disparities in health constitute a significant problem in the United States and lead to reduced general well-being and quality of life for many African Americans. While adolescent stress is clearly implicated in adult chronic disease development, black youth have been relatively underrepresented in health disparities and psychosocial stress research. Recent evidence suggests that stress reduction may significantly reduce blood pressure in African American youth. Thus, identifying stress processes related specifically to social status will potentially allow for prevention and intervention programs to be more tailored to meeting the needs of this at-risk group. In addition the project advances the education of a young social scientist.