This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Research Review: Conclusions Inequality, including but not limited to income and healthcare inequality, is perpetuated by implicit racial or ethnic bias. Implicit bias influences behavior regardless of intentions and can result in unintentional bolstering of inequity.
System justification is a way in which advantaged individuals justify the status quo to help buffer stress from negative events and cope with guilt and distress associated with the existing socioeconomic order. The disadvantaged also engage in system justification, though this may be detrimental to their psychological well-being.
People living in rural areas have less access to ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
The Impact of Discrimination is Far-Reaching for Latinos, Other People of Color
The collective findings on the impacts of discrimination on education, opportunity, and health are critical for people of color. Overall, more Americans say that being Latino hurts people’s ability to get ahead in this country (51%) than say it helps (18%) or that it neither helps nor hurts (30%), according to 2019 and 2020 Pew Research Center surveys.39,40 Among Latinos themselves, about 23% say being Latino has hurt their ability to get ahead at least a little. More Latinos than Whites also say they have been treated unfairly in hiring, pay, or promotion (26% to 19%), ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Implicit Bias Is a Key Mechanism People Use to Excuse Discrimination among People of Color, Those in Poverty
Bias is the tendency to favor one group over another. Most people think they harbor no bias toward other people, or they believe they know their biases and don’t act on them. The first type of bias is explicit bias, or overt bias. Explicit bias is a consciously held set of beliefs about a social group. Acting on race or ethnicity-based bias would be conscious, or explicit, racism, which many Americans openly reject, although which still exists in American society. The second type of bias is implicit bias, or unconscious bias. Implicit ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Discrimination, Segregation Impacts Latino Students
Many Latino children are at risk of not getting the proper care, services, and environment they need for healthy formative development. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs; including racism, discrimination, and violence), poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and low participation in preschool programs can impair Latino children’s social and emotional development, health and wellbeing, and academic achievement.32 Even when minority children live in wealthier areas, research shows that they are often treated differently by teachers. “[Children of color] are more likely to be harshly punished for ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Social Media and Social Justice While much has been said about the detrimental effects of social media on relationships, it is also clear that social media can be used to bring people together, and to bring about social change. The #BlackLivesMatter movement began on Twitter in 2016 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It has reached and engaged millions of people across America, becoming an organization with chapters in more than 30 cities across the United States. The death of Trayvon Martin, and the subsequent deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, and others at the hands of police, ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Latino Families Are More Likely to Live in Poverty
Child poverty rates are more than twice as high for black children than white children (38% vs 14%, 2019 data)10 and Latino children than white children (23.7% vs 8.9%, 2018 data) across the United States,5 according to data published in the 2019 County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Report10 and the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Report.5 The Institute for Policy Studies found that between 1983 and 2013 there was a 51% decline in the wealth of the median Latino household (from $4,100 to $2,000); during this same period, wealth of the median white household increased by 14% from $105,300 to ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
Moral Disengagement Is a Key Mechanism People Use to Excuse Discrimination among People of Color, Those in Poverty
Moral disengagement is the cognitive process of decoupling one’s internal moral standards from one’s actions, thus allowing oneself to conduct unethical behavior without feelings of guilt or distress.65 In simpler terms, it is the psychological process of rationalizing bad decisions, by convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply within a particular context or situation. Moral disengagement has been studied in relation to cruelty to animals, support for the death penalty, or in cases where victims are said to have “brought ...
This is part of the Salud America! Achieving a Cohesive Culture for Health Equity in Latino and All Communities: A Research Review»
The Benefits of Peer Modeling
Liebkind and McAlister77 designed an intervention to determine whether moral engagement and tolerance of other groups could be improved through peer modeling based on the extended contact hypothesis, which supposes that positive intergroup attitudes can be promoted via the knowledge that an in-group member has a close relationship with an out-group member. The in-group friendship partner becomes a positive peer model that demonstrates tolerance in interacting with the outgroup, while the outgroup friendship partner becomes a positive example that repudiates the negative beliefs or stereotypes about the outgroup.77 In the ...
Where you live is significantly linked to how healthy you are. Sadly, U.S. Latino communities face unaffordable housing, unreliable public transportation, and a lack of green space and parks. This limits Latinos’ access to health-promoting assets─medical care, good schools, healthy food, and physical activity. This contributes to health inequities affecting this population. Fortunately, community leaders can adopt dynamic land-use methods, public-private partnerships, and community involvement to build and revitalize Latino neighborhoods. This can create affordable housing, connection to public transportation, and more green spaces. The result is health equity─a fair, just opportunity to achieve the best health possible.
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