Community Bias and Black Child and Maternal Health: Leveraging National Data to Assess Links

This study explores the association between community racial bias, or the aggregate racial biases held by individuals within a community, and physical health among young Black children and their mothers.

Data on child and maternal health were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; N ~ 1650), following children and their mothers from infancy through preschool. Data on community racial bias were drawn from Project Implicit, a research project that administers online surveys of social cognition nationally. Community contextual data were drawn from national administrative data sources including the 2000 Decennial Census, the Economic Census and Business Patterns, and the National Center for Education Statistics. Community data were linked to mother/child dyads in the ECLS-B. Logistic and Poisson regressions estimated associations between community racial bias and child and maternal health across the first 4 years of children's lives.

Associations with children's poor general health (odds ratio [OR] 1.85, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.01-3.38) in toddlerhood and poor health conditions in infancy (1.51, 1.05-2.16), toddlerhood (2.09, 1.37-3.18), and preschool (1.77, 1.13-2.76) emerged. Results showed associations between community racial bias and maternal poor general health during their child's infancy (2.72, 1.25-5.91), toddlerhood (3.85, 1.68-8.81), and preschool years (2.96, 1.45-6.02). Associations remained after accounting for individual, family, and neighborhood covariates.

These findings underscore the need for research and policy efforts to understand and address racism in community settings.