Jew owned publication, Metro West says, Racism to blame for nigger infant mortality. Well of course, racism is also the true reason that niggers are born black, if it wasn't for the fact that Whites hate them and fuck them over at every opportunity, they'd be White just like us too.

Racism-induced stress: Medical effect probed

FRAMINGHAM — Edna Smith recalled visitors assuming her white secretary was the boss. Linda Bishop Hudson said she is followed by security guards in department stores. Dr. Anita Nartey described the time a boy called her son a racial name.

Those were some of the stories recounted last night at MetroWest Medical Center during a forum on racial and ethnic health disparities and the suspected connection between racism-induced stress and medical outcomes.

In the United States, the infant mortality rate for blacks is twice as high as for whites, according to an installment of the documentary series "Unnatural Causes," the focus of the first half of the forum.

Some of the difference can be attributed to socioeconomic factors: The rates for blacks fell after the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty, but rose after cuts to social programs in the 1980s.

However, a dramatic difference in the races persists even in the middle class. The infant mortality rate for the progeny of white, college-educated mothers is 3.7 per 1,000 births, while the rate for the offspring of their black counterparts is 9.3 per 1,000. That is higher than the rate for the babies of white mothers with just a high school degree, at 9.2.

The cause does not seem to be genetic: The infant mortality rate for African immigrants is lower than that for native-born blacks. The infant mortality rate for immigrants rises, however, after one generation on American soil.

Such numbers have led the documentary's experts and speakers at the forum to conclude that the stress of dealing with still-potent racism has taken its toll medically, contributing to premature births and low birth rates.

"It's like gunning the engine of a car without ever letting up," Dr. Camara Jones of the Centers for Disease Control says in the movie.

Regionally, the MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation, the forum's sponsor, has formed a group to address the disparities. The organization has also created an annual fellowship for a pair of doctors trained in cultural sensitivity to work in the community.

Dr. Nartey, one of the fellows and a native of Ghana, said minorities often avoid going to doctors they think don't understand their background.

"They don't believe the doctor is out to look after their well-being," she said.

Nartey related a story about an African immigrant family who perplexed staff with their insistence that their dying matriarch's swollen leg be drained. Nartey spoke with the family and realized that villagers back home would think the swollen leg had been the mark of a sinful life.

"We sometimes should take a step back and realize it's not all about medicine," she said.

Panelist Dr. Alice Coombs, an anesthesiologist and critical-care specialist, commended the foundation's efforts and said the state's medical schools needed to follow suit with sensitivity training.

"That's the kind of thing that's got to happen all over the state," she said.

As for addressing racism-induced stress, panelist and psychologist Dr. Kermit Anthony Crawford said he saw signs that American society was evolving, such as Sen. Barack Obama's clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination. But he said the effort needed to continue at the societal level since stress from racism was so internalized and subconscious in individuals.

"There's no real way you can inoculate, there's no way to reverse, there's no way to say, 'Now you're OK,"' he said.

But Bishop Hudson, the moderator and a community health expert for the American Cancer Society, said it would help to have the impact of the stress acknowledged by society. In the movie, experts surmised that the stress could trigger earlier births and restrict blood flow to the placenta.

"This is real," she said. "This is not in someone's head."

(Michael Morton can be reached at mmorton@cnc.com or 508-626-4338.)

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/lifestyle/health_and_environment/x446776771/Racism-induced-stress-Medical-effect-probed