A study of 619,130 African Americans and whites led by Health Policy and Management Professor and Chair Thomas LaVeist and published in the Journal of Urban Health identified differences in the two population’s health over time. The research team used data from National Health Interview Surveys from between 2000–2009 and used a mixed models approach to show that the African Americans had a higher prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and cardiovascular disease across all age groups. They found that African Americans exhibited equivalent prevalence rates for these three conditions 10 years earlier than whites, a finding consistent with the weathering hypothesis, which asserts that the health of African Americans begins to deteriorate prematurely compared to whites as a consequence of long-term exposure to social and environmental risk factors.
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