Brief report: Neighborhood disadvantage and hair cortisol among older urban African Americans

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that living in poor neighborhoods is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, researchers are now investigating the biological pathways responsible for the deleterious effects of neighborhood disadvantage on health. This study investigated whether neighborhood disadvantage (i.e., a measure of relative neighborhood quality derived by combining social and built environmental conditions) was associated with hair cortisol—a retrospective indicator of long-term hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis activation—and whether this link would be mediated by self-reported neighborhood satisfaction. Forty-nine older African Americans aged were recruited from thirty-nine Detroit census tracts across five strata of census tract adversity. Participants were interviewed face-to-face to collect psychosocial measures. Each provided a hair sample for analysis of cortisol. Multiple regression analyses revealed that higher neighborhood disadvantage was associated with higher levels of hair cortisol levels and that neighborhood satisfaction partially explained this association. These results are the first to our knowledge to demonstrate a direct link between neighborhood disadvantage and hair cortisol in a sample of older adults and to show that the self-reported neighborhood satisfaction may be a psychological intermediary of this association.

Sociodemographics and chronic stress in mother–toddler dyads living in poverty

“…The second notable finding of this study is that mothers in the sample who identified as Black or had a toddler identified as Black had higher chronic stress than mothers who did not identify as Black. These findings are similar to those of Bailey et al (2017), who found that African Americans reported more distress than White European Americans, and Zilioli et al (2017), who reported that older African Americans have higher levels of chronic stress with more neighborhood disadvantage.…”

“…(2017), who found that African Americans reported more distress than White European Americans, and Zilioli et al. (2017), who reported that older African Americans have higher levels of chronic stress with more neighborhood disadvantage.…”

Sociodemographic Differences in Population-Level Immunosenescence in Older Age

“…For example, social differences in housing, transportation, and occupations may lead to more infectious exposures, highlighted by COVID-19.27 Living in disadvantaged neighborhoods can increase the quantity and frequency of exposure to pollution, noise, and psychosocial stressors that activate cortisol production via the HPA-axis, potentially interacting directly with immune cells. 28 Indeed, previous research has shown that psychosocial trauma is associated with changes in these ratios in the same direction we identified, suggesting that psychosocial stressors may play a role in the association between disadvantage and immunosenescence. 22 If stressors age the immune system, our findings could have key implications for understanding the biological mechanisms linking disadvantage to poor health.…”

Psychosocial experiences modulate asthma-associated genes through gene-environment interactions

“…The parent reported demographics, including their annual income and education level, and completed measures of subjective SES (the McArthur ladder [ Adler et al, 2000 ], adjusted so that 1 corresponds to the lowest status and 10 to the highest), neighborhood stress ( Ewart and Suchday, 2002 ), conflict with their child (the Parental Environment Questionnaire; Elkins et al, 1997 ), and depressive symptoms (the CES-D; Radloff, 1977 ). The zip code for each family was also collected and used to retrieve objective measures of neighborhood quality based on census block data from 2010 and Data Driven Detroit (collected in 2009), including the percentage of houses rated as fair in quality or better, percentage of houses currently unoccupied, and the percent of people in that area living below the poverty line ( Zilioli et al, 2017 ).…”