This study examined whether religious coping buffered the associations between racial discrimination and several modifiable cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in African American men and women.
The paper was published online in Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (JREHD) in August 2024. Dr. Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, the Center’s Associate Director of Research and Director of its Health Equity Working Group, was a co-author on the paper.
Key Findings
- For African American men who experienced prior racial discrimination, higher religious coping use was related to diminished CVD risk.
- However, these anticipated effects were not seen among men in the absence of discrimination nor among women who experienced discrimination.
- Individual- and community-level interventions must attend to the social conditions and culturally lived experiences of African American women and men uniquely.
