What is race?
Even as it defines much of U.S. life and society, the answer to that question is not straightforward, particularly when it comes to health. In public health and sociology, there’s been a strong focus on understanding race as a social construct, particularly in the U.S. In biomedicine and genetics, it has often been used as a proxy for ancestry. Others understand it as the grey area between those two, a socially derived concept that is intrinsically linked with biology. The list goes on.
Though there’s no universal understanding of what race is (or how to measure it), biomedical journals are filled with papers referencing race without ever defining it. That makes it a challenge (or impossible) to know what to make of the findings.
[For more on this story by Anna Maria Barry-Jester, go to https://www.centerforhealthjou...here-s-why-s-problem]
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