ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2021
The effects of social adversity, discrimination, and health risk behaviors on the accelerated aging of African Americans: Further support for the weathering hypothesis.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 114 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
114 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 173 citations in OpenAlex.
- Punitive school discipline as a mechanism of structural marginalization with implications for health inequity: A systematic review of quantitative studies in the health and social sciences literature.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Relationship intervention moderates the association between substance use and biological aging among Black adults.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2025Trial
- Intervention effects on self-control decrease speed of biological aging mediated by changes in substance use: A longitudinal study of African American youth.Family process · 2022Trial
- The contribution of social and economic factors to accelerated biological aging differences between non-Hispanic Black and White adults in the Health and Retirement Study.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2026Article
- Examining Functional Limitation Trajectories Among Adults Experiencing Homelessness Versus the General Adult Population in Los Angeles County.American journal of preventive medicine · 2026Article
- How "Clocking in" Ages Us: An Examination of Work History, Work Quality, and Accelerated Epigenetic Aging in Older Adulthood.Journal of health and social behavior · 2026Article
- Multi-system aging vulnerability associated with prolonged violence exposure: evidence from a Colombian sample.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Biopsychosocial stressors and perinatal mental health: The mediating role of social support in a Pakistani cohort.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- The association between four neighborhood disadvantage indices and child chronic health classifications.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Effect of age-friendly community degree on the cognitive function of older adults.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Intersecting social determinants of health, multimorbidity and quality of life in people of Black ethnicities with HIV in South London.AIDS (London, England) · 2025Article
- Contemplative Practices as a Form of Stress Management for Patients with Kidney Disease.Clinical journal of the American Society of Nephrology : CJASN · 2025Review
- Spatial and Racial/Ethnic Variation in the Prevalence of Cesarean Delivery in a South Carolina Medical Center.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025Observational
- An epigenome-wide analysis of DNA methylation, racialized and economic inequities, and air pollution.Clinical epigenetics · 2025Article
- Weathering the STORM and Forecasting Equity for Older Black Women: Expanding Social Determinants of Health.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- The Bidirectional Association Between Racial Discrimination and Pubertal Development: A Prospective Investigation Among Black and Latinx Adolescents.The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2025Article
- Cumulative neighborhood disadvantage and racial and geographic disparities in epigenetic aging.SSM - population health · 2025Article
- Development and Initial Validation of a Measure of Parental Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in Pediatric Healthcare.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025Article
- Cortisol, DHEAS, and the cortisol/DHEAS ratio as predictors of epigenetic age acceleration.Biogerontology · 2025Article
- Discrimination, Coping, and DNAm Accelerated Aging Among African American Mothers of the InterGEN Study.Epigenomes · 2025Article
54 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe weathering hypothesis views the elevated rates of illness, disability, and mortality seen among Black Americans as a physiological response to the structural barriers, material hardships, and identity threats that comprise the Black experience. While granting that lifestyle may have some significance, the fundamental explanation for heath inequalities is seen as race-related stressors that accelerate biological aging.
objectiveThe present study tests the weathering hypothesis by examining the impact on accelerated aging of four types of adversity frequently experienced by Black Americans. Further, we investigate whether health risk behaviors mediate the effect of these conditions.
methodOur analyses utilize data from 494 middle-age, African American men and women participating in the Family and Community Healthy Study. The newly developed GrimAge index of accelerated aging is used as an indicator of weathering. Education, income, neighborhood disadvantage, and discrimination serve as the independent variables. Three health risk behaviors - diet, exercise, and alcohol consumption - are included as potential mediators of the four types of adversity. Marital status and gender are entered as controls.
resultsMultivariate analyses indicated that the four types of adversity predicted acceleration whereas marriage predicted deceleration in speed of aging. Males showed greater accelerated aging than females, but there was no evidence that gender conditioned the effect of adversity. The health risk behaviors were unrelated to accelerated aging and did not mediate the effect of the stressors.
conclusionModern medicine's emphasis on life style as the primary explanation for race-based health disparities ignores the way race-related adversity rooted in structural and cultural conditions serves to accelerate biological decline, thereby increasing risk of early onset of illness and death. Importantly, these social conditions can only be addressed through social policies and programs that target institutional racism and promote economic equity.
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