MSU to launch first nationally-funded structural racism study

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Researchers from Michigan State University and Rutgers University will lead the first nationally funded study to explore the effects of structural racism in the built environment throughout the life course on aging-related endpoints such as cognitive decline and frailty, especially among Black Americans.

Structural racism refers to how things such as law and policy affect racial groups differently, creating and maintaining racial inequity. For instance, areas with a history of redlining or segregation often continue to maintain their racial divides long after these policies are gone—and the socioeconomic disadvantages that come with them.

Funded by an expected $3.7 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, the study will examine how policies leading to racial neighborhood disparities in Baltimore over the past century have impacted the health of 800 Black and white residents.

Rutgers professor Danielle Beatty Moody and MSU professor Dick Sadler, who are in charge of the project, say Black people face both earlier onset and greater rates of age-related cognitive and physical decline when compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the nation—and they argue that this is the result of living in environments negatively impacted by structural racism.

Our work seeks to call out and disentangle the vast array of tools used to entrench structural racism in the neighborhood environment, past, present and future. One drum we have been beating is that ‘it’s not just redlining, and it’s not just segregation.’ The patterns of racist, discriminatory practices in the landscape go far deeper and are more insidious than these singular practices. We need to comprehensively document what the full constellation of tools, tactics and strategies look like in our urban landscapes to better contextualize why racial inequities emerge and persist across numerous health endpoints, for which all Americans ultimately suffer but for which Black Americans consistently take the largest hits.

Rutgers professor Danielle Beatty Moody and MSU professor Dick Sadler, who are in charge of the project, in an Oct. 22 MSU news release

The project seeks to expand on previous research into the effects of redlining and segregation to understand other elements of structural racism and how they impact the health of the Black population.

The end goal of the project is to figure out how to address racial inequities in accelerated aging, supplementing ongoing efforts in policy to improve health equity across different races.

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