Health Impacts of Environmental Racism

A Photo of New York City and HOLC categories. Sourced from American Public Healh Association.

This is a color coded map of New York City, we see the way that neighborhoods were divided into catergories, with A being the best-- green, B being desirable-- blue, C being declining-- yellow and D being hazourdous-- red. This study looks at preterm births that occured from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2017. They found that births occuring in C and D rated areas were more likely to be preterm, with 2/3 of preterm births coming from these areas. This disparitity is most likely due to one of the following, "resources for healthy living as features of the built environment, environmental pollution, quality and availability of housing stock, access to transportation, presence of local employers and access to well-paying jobs, presence of and access to well-resourced schools, and access to and quality of health facilities, food stores, bank branches, social services, and parks and recreational facilities" (Krieger et al., 2020).

A Photo of a graph showing health outcomes based on neighborhood grade. Sourced from School of Public Health.

Although the redlining was legally prohibited in the 1960's, it is important to recognize that it's effects are long lasting and still present today. Decades of racism in the housing market have prevented people of color, particularly Black Americans, equal access to capital, low cost loans, and home ownership. As we've seen and talked about with slavery, although is now unconstiutional, it takes on new forms throuhout history. In this study they survey residents of Milwaukee, and favor this area because of it's hypersegrigation that is still seen today. This graph shows areas of Milwaukee, high investment, growing investment, disinvested and sustained disinvestment. There is a prevalent pattern of high levels of poor physical health, poor mental health and infant mortality rate being associated with disinvested and sustained disinvestment areas (Lynch et al., 2021).

A Photo of a diagram deomonstrating a conceptual model of the pathway from historical redlining to present-day health outcomes. Sourced from Journal of Urban Health.

This model describes the relationship between historical redlining and present day health outcomes. It essentially expains that structualr racism is the way in which systems and institutions implement policies that are used to segregate people into specfic areas based on race and SES. This allows them to allocate resoures where they see fit, and furhter the issues of inequity. The diagram then goes into how the neighborhood you live in acts a social determinant of health and can contribute to poverty, housing inequities, and segrigation. These factors can lead to psycholgical distress leading the people in these communities to live with morbidity, and forces them to turn to unhealthy habits to cope with these stressors.