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Using the Race Model Inequality to Quantify Behavioral Multisensory Integration Effects
Published on: May 10, 2019
Health disparities by race and class: why both matter
Ichiro Kawachi1, Norman Daniels, Dean E Robinson
1Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ichiro.Kawachi@channing.harvard.edu
Abstract:
In this essay we examine three competing causal interpretations of racial disparities in health. The first approach views race as a biologically meaningful category and racial disparities in health as reflecting inherited susceptibility to disease. The second approach treats race as a proxy for class and views socioeconomic stratification as the real culprit behind racial disparities. The third approach treats race as neither a biological category nor a proxy for class, but as a distinct construct, akin to caste. We point to historical, political, and ideological obstacles that have hindered the analysis of race and class as codeterminants of disparities in health.
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