A new study finds that worrying about police brutality and harassment is associated with physical markers of cardiovascular health risk in Black women in the United states.
The study found the association was most pronounced for Black women concerned about potential interactions between their children and police.
“There’s a substantial body of work that suggests stress associated with police brutality has notable adverse health effects on Black people in the US—but the bulk of that work has focused on Black men,” says Lori Hoggard, corresponding author of the research paper describing the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University.
“We wanted to see if there were associations between police-related stress and adverse health risks in Black women.”
For this study, the researchers recruited 422 Black women, aged 30-46. Study participants were asked a series of questions that captured their experiences with law enforcement, concerns about their own future interactions with law enforcement, and concerns about their children’s potential interactions with law enforcement.
The researchers measured several indicators of cardiovascular health risk, including blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), and levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation.
“We found that greater levels of concern about police interactions—notably concerns about their children—were associated with higher blood pressure, higher BMI, and higher levels of C-reactive protein,” Hoggard says.
“This suggests that police-related stress may contribute to cardiovascular health disparities in Black women.”
The study doesn’t prove that police-related stress causes these health problems,Hoggard notes.However, the findings highlight the need to address the systemic stressors faced by Black women and their families.
“This work underscores the importance of considering the broader social and political context when examining health disparities,” Hoggard says. “It’s not just about individual behaviors; it’s about the surroundings people live in and the stressors thay face.”
the research appears in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
