Exploring How Stress Exposure is Related to Older Black Women’s Physical Health
By Christy L. Erving, Ph.D.
Black women experience significant health disadvantages compared to other U.S. populations. For instance, older Black women report their physical health as worse, on average, when compared to White women, White men, and Black men. Furthermore, among Black women over the age of 50 years, approximately 2 out of 3 have multiple chronic conditions (MCC; i.e., two or more chronic physical diseases).
Given the significant health disadvantages of Black women, it is important to understand how social conditions may impact their health. Another important, but understudied, reality is that not all Black women have the same social experiences. Ethnicity is an important social factor that could differentiate the experiences of Black women. In this study, I investigated the health older Black women who identified as African American compared to Black women who identified as Afro-Caribbean (i.e., born within or having parents born within a Caribbean area country such as Jamaica, Haiti, or Trinidad & Tobago) living in the United States. I used a national survey to answer these research questions that included 644 African American and 223 Afro-Caribbean women who were 50 years of age and older.
I also wanted to know if African American and Afro-Caribbean women experienced different levels of stress exposure. Stressors are external circumstances that may make it difficult for a person to adapt, in turn, causing psychological and physical distress. The stressors I explored in this study included discrimination or unfair treatment (e.g., being perceived as not smart, being unfairly denied a bank loan), stressful life events (e.g., problems with family or marriage), material hardship (e.g., inability to pay monthly bills), and perceived neighborhood crime. I also examined whether stress accumulation (e.g., measured by the number of stressors reported) was related to health.
One major finding was that compared to Afro-Caribbean women living in the U.S., African American women had worse physical health with regards to multiple chronic conditions, self-rated health, and functional limitations (e.g., difficulty with moving around inside their homes, walking or standing for a long period of time).
A second major finding was that older African American women reported more stressful levels events, on average, than their Afro-Caribbean counterparts. In addition, African American women reported greater levels of stress accumulation than Afro-Caribbean women. For example, though 9% of African American women experienced four or more stressors, 2% of Afro-Caribbean experienced four or more stressors. With regards to the other stress exposures (e.g., discrimination, perceived neighborhood crime), African American and Afro-Caribbean women reported similar levels.
A third aim of the study was to investigate whether stressors were related to physical health among older Black women. I found that experiencing stressful life events and stress accumulation were consistently associated with worse health (i.e., MCC, functional limitations, self-rated health). These strong and consistent associations among stressful life events, stress accumulation, and health suggest that reducing stress is a critically needed component for any health promotion and heath prevention programs designed for older Black women. These findings also suggest that the proliferation of stress is important to reduce above and beyond focusing on a single stressor. As such, multifaceted stress reduction efforts will potentially be more effective for preventing health problems than targeting only one domain of stress.
Article Details
Stress Exposure and Physical Health among Older African American and Caribbean Black Women
Christy L. Erving, PhD
First published online April 12, 2022
DOI: 10.1177/08982643221085406
Journal of Aging and Health
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