Feature Channels: Race and Ethnicity

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Newspaper accounts of black executions in the old South reveal a social history that intersects race with crime and punishment.

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For years, medical studies have reached the same conclusion: African-American patients do better on kidney dialysis than their white counterparts. But new Johns Hopkins research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that younger blacks — those under the age of 50 — actually do much worse on dialysis than equally sick whites who undergo the same blood-filtering process.

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Picture black and white students at an Ivy League college learning about black students who are a year or so ahead of them in that school. They’re told that the older black students were anxious about fitting in and how they would be viewed in college when they first arrived. But as the older black students got more involved in campus life, they began to find the school rewarding, even exciting as their life course took shape.

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Education and prevention are keys to closing the health care gap, Saint Louis University doctor says.

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Cultural, ethnic and gender stereotypes can significantly distort clinical judgments about "facially masked" patients with Parkinson's disease, according to a newly published study from researchers at Tufts University, Brandeis University and the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

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Black children were four times more likely than white children to be hospitalized for a severe asthma attack in 2007.

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In the wake of the unveiling of a commemorative stamp depicting Mark Twain, a Baylor University scholar says there was more to anti-racist Twain than most people know — including a stint as a Confederate soldier.

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Racial bias may contribute to the overrepresentation of African-American children in the child welfare system, a new study says.

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African-Americans have fewer incidences of thyroid cancer but have a more advanced form of the disease once they receive a diagnosis — and are more likely to die from it, according to a new study.

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In California, young Asian/Pacific Islander women born in the state have higher risks of breast cancer than young white women, and some groups, including Filipinas, might have higher risks than African-Americans.

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A new study suggests there has been some improvement in reducing the quality gap in stroke hospitalization between white and minority patients.

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University of Michigan Health System study reveals why black heart attack patients wait longer for advanced treatment after arriving at some hospital emergency rooms. The differences in care may be explained by hospital quality, rather than the race of individual patients. Black patients were much more likely to go to slow hospitals than were whites, and as a result waited six hours longer to get life-saving procedures.

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Law professor and social activist Adjoa Aiyetoro is named the founding director of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's new Institute on Race and Ethnicity. The culmination of four years of internal and community conversations, programming, research, and outreach on the subject of race, the new institute will address these issues through education, research, dialogue, community events, and reconciliation initiatives.

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Black and Mexican American doctors and lawyers aren’t any more likely to play “high-status” sports such as golf or tennis than less educated people within their racial-ethnic groups, and more educated blacks may actually be less inclined to do so, suggests a new study.

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Studies show that minorities who suffer strokes are less knowledgeable than whites about risk factors and are slower to receive care when every minute counts.

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African-Americans who have multiple sclerosis (MS) have lower vitamin D levels than African-Americans who don’t have the disease, according to a study published in the May 24, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. However, most of the difference in vitamin D levels was due to differences in climate and geography.

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Whites believe they are the primary victims of racial bias in America. Whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased. But whites now believe "reverse racism" has increased and is a bigger problem than anti-black bias.

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Hollywood movies directed by African-Americans are significantly more likely to include African-American characters with speaking roles than movies not directed by African-Americans, according to a report released today from USC Annenberg.

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While children of all ethnicities can contract Kawasaki disease, a study led by researchers at the Kawasaki Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego finds that Filipino children with KD are at a higher risk for inflammation of the blood vessels of the heart than those of other Asian and non-Asian backgrounds.

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A new study examining 18 years of data from the California state tobacco quitline found that African American smokers used the counseling service at significantly higher rates than Caucasian smokers. The finding is reported in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

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Asian students study twice as many hours, says UC San Diego economist.

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1) Blacks and Hispanics less likely than whites to receive screening; 2) Disparities persisted after increased colorectal screening coverage.

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Latinas who endure violence at the hands of a partner during or within a year of pregnancy are five times more likely to suffer postpartum depression than women who have not experienced such violence.

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African-Americans are consistently more likely than white smokers to use telephone help lines to quit smoking.

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Media campaigns that offer positive encouragement can have an impact on getting African-Americans to quit smoking.

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Research shows racial bias influences views of Obama.

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Hospitals and physician practices that form care-coordinating networks called “Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs),” under provisions of the new health-care law could reap cost-savings and other benefits. However, experts at Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania warn that such networks could potentially be designed to exclude minorities and widen disparities in health care.

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Blacks, Hispanics and Asians are more likely than whites to spend their life savings to extend life; preferences could inform cancer care

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Thinking happy thoughts, focusing on the good and downplaying the bad is believed to accelerate recovery from depression, bolster resilience during a crisis and improve overall mental health. But pursuing happiness may not be beneficial across all cultures.

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New research indicates supplementation with the "sunshine vitamin" may be particularly beneficial for overweight African-American adults, a population at increased risk for both cardiovascular disease and vitamin D deficiency.

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The proportion of poor adults age 40 and over with diabetes who had their blood sugar, eyes and feet examined at least once a year dropped from 39 percent to 23 percent between 2002 and 2007.

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As figures from the 2010 census are released, political scientist Pearl Ford Dowe of the University of Arkansas is available to discuss opinions of African-Americans on politics and social issues, both in the South and nationally. She draws on findings from the 2010 Blair-Rockefeller Poll.

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Latinos benefit from antidepressants like everybody else — only they do not use them nearly as often. The trick is getting past some cultural barriers.

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A new study finds that African-American and Asian/Pacific Islander women have double the risk that others do of becoming depressed before giving birth.

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Leading experts on what has been called "the new antisemitism" will meet at Indiana University next month for a scholarly examination of anti-Jewish bias and hatred that has arisen across much of the world in the past decade.

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As figures from the 2010 census are released, political scientist Rafael Jimeno of the University of Arkansas is available to discuss emerging political preferences and behaviors of Latinos both in the South and nationally. He draws on findings from the 2010 Blair-Rockefeller Poll.

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Jobless African-American men might be at a greater risk of suffering from depression -- along with African-American men making $80,000 and upward.

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Years of research show black patients getting less treatment in the American health care system than their white counterparts, but a new study suggests that a quick dose of empathy helps close racial gaps in pain treatment.

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Healthcare leaders consider HIT’s potential in promoting greater health equity and patient-entered care vs. its potential to unintentionally increase existing disparities in health and health care.

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Lower potassium levels in the blood may help explain why African-Americans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as whites, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

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Black children are involved in reported cases of child abuse at approximately twice the rate of white children. Until now, this has generally been attributed to racial bias in the child welfare system. But in a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, F. Brett Drake, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, finds that much, if not most, of the overrepresentation of black children in maltreatment reporting is due to increased exposure to risk factors such as poverty.

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The 2010 National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report have just been released.

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David Frankel, associate professor of economics, looked at public school enrollments from every school district in the country and found that school segregation between blacks and whites has improved only slightly from 1987 to 2007.

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A working class kid from the United Kingdom has become an authority of the American Civil Rights movement, publishing three books on civil rights struggles in Arkansas. With new book on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating in Arkansas comes out in June, Dr. John Kirk is the chair of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Department of History, a school located just blocks from the infamous Little Rock Central High School. (NOTE TO EDITORS: UALR is part of the University of Arkansas System but is a separate campus from Fayetteville).

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Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders may be at higher risk for hemorrhagic stroke at a younger age and more likely to have diabetes compared to other ethnicities, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 63rd Annual Meeting in Honolulu April 9 to April 16, 2011.

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During Black History Month, a Baylor researcher discusses his discovery that courageous black musicians delivered civil rights messages that in an unexpected place -- the flip sides of vintage gospel 45s.

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Obama may be first black president at1600 Pennsylvania Ave, but the black history of the White House traces a black presence back to America’s very first president.

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At a time when access to prompt treatment might affect survival, a large new study finds that African-American and Hispanic women newly diagnosed with breast cancer often face delays in care of more than a month.

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A surprisingly large number of “B” sides on old 45s of gospel songs address the subject of civil rights, the Vietnam War and other social issues, according to a Baylor University researcher who is overseeing a preservation effort called the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.

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Significant disparities exist between the race of kidney disease patients and that of the physicians who will care for them, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that efforts are needed to increase minority recruitment into kidney specialty programs to more closely balance the racial background of physicians and patients.