Seminar Series: Individual Behavior and Population Health Disparities: The Affordances Framework for Understanding Population Disparities in Physical and Mental Health

About the talk

Physical health and mortality disparities consistently favor non-Hispanic whites over black Americans. On the other hand, over the last 25 years epidemiological studies reveal that Blacks suffer the same or lower rates of serious mental disorders as Whites. Coping, consciously or unconsciously, with chronically stressful environments often involves engaging in unhealthy behaviors, including smoking, alcohol and drug use, and over-eating. These actions have brain effects through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenalcortical (HPA) axis to alleviate the harmful physiological reactions to stressful environmental exposures, and protect individuals from mental disorders. These same chronic stress exposures and poor health behaviors, however, are silently affecting biological pathways that eventuate in physical health morbidity and mortality disparities among groups.

About the speaker

James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, and Director of the Institute for Social Research, all at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on issues of racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support, and coping and health among blacks in the Diaspora. He is past Director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies and past national president of the Black Students Psychological Association and Association of Black Psychologists. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association, and recently received the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He is an elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Visit Professor Jackson's webpage

Co-sponsored by the African-American Studies Department and the Center for Health Equity