Most people can acknowledge that discrimination has an insidious effect on the lives of minorities, even when it's unintentional. Those effects can include being passed over for jobs for which they are qualified or shut out of housing they can afford. And most people are painfully aware of the tensions between African-Americans and police.
But discrimination can also lead to a less obvious result: tangible, measurable negative effects on health. A new survey conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health asked members of different ethnic and racial groups about their experiences with discrimination. Ninety-two percent of African-American respondents said they felt discrimination against African-Americans exists in the United States today, and at least half said they have experienced it themselves at work or when interacting with police.
All of this discrimination can literally be deadly, according to Harvard professor David Williams, who has spent years studying the health effects of discrimination.
[For more on this story by MICHEL MARTIN, go to http://www.npr.org/2017/10/28/...-bad-for-your-healthscrimination.
For more stories related to this topic, go to Why Discrimination Is a Health Issue, Some Black Americans Turn To Informal Economy In The Face Of Discrimination, Children And The Opioid Crisis.
Photo: Harvard professor David Williams says, "Much of this discrimination that occurs in the health care context, and in other contexts of society, may not even be intentional." Sarah Sholes/Courtesy of Harvard Chan
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