Kathryn Freeman Anderson

Racially Charged Legislation and Latino Health Disparities: The Case of Arizona's S.B. 1070

Researchers have established that minority groups tend to suffer worse health outcomes compared to their white counterparts, though the specific mechanisms at play are still under investigation. The passing of Arizonas 2010 “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” commonly referred to as “S.B. 1070,” provides a unique opportunity to examine the effects of an increasingly racially charged milieu on Latino health. Using the Arizona sample of the 2009–2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we find that the changing social setting around S.B. 1070 is related to poorer Latino self-reported health, but only for those whose primary language is Spanish. Furthermore, serving as control groups, we find no such relationship in other U.S.-Mexico border states that had no analogous legislation (Texas, New Mexico, and California). We expand on stress process theory and group position theory to explain this increase in Arizonas negative health reporting, despite traditional social and economic protective factors.

Racial Residential Segregation and Access to Health Care Coverage: a Multilevel Analysis

A developing body of research has demonstrated the impact of racial residential segregation on a variety of negative health outcomes. However, little is known about the effect of residential segregation on access to health care. This study utilizes multilevel binary logit models based on individual-level health data from the 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System linked to metropolitan-area level data to examine the association between Black-White segregation in 136 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States and health-care coverage. Overall, an increase in Black-White segregation is related to a decrease in the likelihood of having health insurance for Black residents and an increase in the Black-White gap in health-care coverage. These effects are substantial even when controlling for the effects of educational, social, and economic factors. This study is the first to examine the impact of segregation on an individuals ability to access health-care coverage, which is an essential starting point for accessing health care in the United States.

Rethinking the Boundaries: Competitive Threat and the Asymmetric Salience of Race/Ethnicity in Attitudes toward Immigrants

Research on attitudes toward immigrants has come to divergent conclusions regarding the role of race and ethnicity in shaping these attitudes. Using survey data from 18 European countries, the authors analyze how conditions associated with both economic and cultural threat shape respondents’ receptivity to establishing relationships with immigrants of the same race or ethnicity versus immigrants of a different race or ethnicity. The analyses reveal that the salience of racial and ethnic differences in shaping attitudes toward immigrants is asymmetric. Those who are more likely to express negative attitudes toward immigrants are also more likely to differentiate between immigrants on the basis of race and ethnicity, whereas those less likely to express negative attitudes are also less likely to distinguish between immigrants on the basis of racial and ethnic differences. The authors discuss the substantive and theoretical implications of these findings.

Racial Residential Segregation and the Distribution of Auxiliary Health Care Practitioners Across Urban Space

Abstract Scholarship has demonstrated important consequences of segregation on health and health care outcomes, yet the mechanisms behind this association remain poorly understood. Several recent studies have shown inequities in the distribution of a wide variety of health-related organizations across urban neighborhoods, which may account for some portion of this negative health association. Though, within this literature, relatively little attention has been given to the distribution of health care facilities in particular. Here, I consider how segregation is related to the distribution of several auxiliary health care practitioners in a series of spatial regression models of zip codes across the United States using data from the 2010 US Census and County Business Patterns (CBP). I find that both Black and Latino segregation is negatively related to the density of a number of auxiliary health care practitioners, including mental health providers, dentists, physical/occupational/speech therapists, chiropractors, optometrists, podiatrists, and miscellaneous health care practitioners. However, this association is reduced (in certain instances to non-significance) with the inclusion of socioeconomic indicators, chiefly the percent of college educated individuals and the unemployment rate of the zip code. This is association is reduced for both Black and Latino segregation, with a larger reduction in the size of the effects for Latino segregation. This research suggests that segregation plays an important role in the distribution of health care facilities, but that policy and public health interventions should focus on the intersection between racial residential segregation and socioeconomic considerations.

Bringing People Back In: Crisis Planning and Response Embedded in Social Contexts

Urban resilience requires sophisticated technical expertise to anticipate problems and develop transformative solutions, yet these efforts alone are often insufficient. We argue that resilience work needs to acknowledge the social contexts in which these plans are situated to better identify potential pitfalls and negotiate challenges “on the ground.” Drawing on Zukin and DiMaggio’s (Structures of capital: the social organization of the economy. Cambridge University, Cambridge, pp 1–36, 1990) embeddedness framework, we explain how cognitive, cultural, structural, and political contexts can complicate resilience work. First, we describe the framework and draw on extant literature to show how the four dimensions relate to urban resilience. Then, we use case studies from two environmental disasters to illustrate how emergency response efforts fell short because they did not adequately account for social context. Our aim is to orient urban resilience experts and practitioners to embeddedness thinking and offer suggestions for ways to better negotiate obstacles to success and opportunities for improvement inherent in the social environment.

Income Inequality and Chronic Health Conditions: A Multilevel Analysis of the U.S. States

ABSTRACT Recently, scholarly work has examined the effect of rising income inequality on health outcomes. However, this work is somewhat inconclusive. The mechanisms that could produce such an association are still being sorted out. Much of this work focuses on mortality outcomes with little attention to how this process operates for actual health conditions, including chronic health problems—arguably the main public health concerns of the developed world. In a series of multilevel binary logistic regression models using data from the 2005 and 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we examine the association between state-level income inequality, poverty, and social welfare measures on spending and policy to examine the association between these factors for three chronic health outcomes: diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease. We find that income inequality is conditionally positively related only to the diagnosis of diabetes and hypertension, and only in 2007. However, absolute poverty is related to the outcome across all three dependent variables. Certain social welfare measures attenuate the effects of both income inequality and absolute poverty, suggesting that some policies reduce this association.

Job Insecurity and Substance Use in the United States: Stress, Strain, and the Gendering of Precarious Employment

Abstract Research on the social determinants of health demonstrates that workers who feel insecure in their jobs suffer poorer health as a result. However, relatively few studies have examined the relationship between job insecurity and illegal substance use, which is closely related to health. In this study, we develop a theoretical model focusing on two intervening mechanisms: health and life satisfaction. Additionally, we examine differences in this relationship between women and men. We test this model using logistic regression models of substance use for women and men based on longitudinal data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. The results indicate that job insecurity is associated with a significantly higher probability of illegal substance use among women but not men. We interpret this as further evidence of the gendering of precarious employment. This relationship is not channeled through health or life satisfaction, but there is evidence that job insecurity has a stronger association with illegal substance use for women with poorer overall health.