Narratives of Stress in Health Meanings of African Americans in Lake County, Indiana

Abstract

Across the life course, African Americans bear an unequal burden of disease compared to other racial groups. In spite of the widespread acknowledgment of racial health disparities, the voices of African Americans, their articulations of health and their local etiologies of health disparities are limited. In this article, we highlight the important role of communication scholarship to understand the everyday enactment of health disparities. Drawing upon the culture-centered approach (CCA) to co-construct narratives of health with African Americans residents of Lake County, Indiana, we explore the presence of stress in the everyday narratives of health. These narratives voice the social and structural sources of stress, and articulate resistive coping strategies embedded in relationship to structures.

Characterizing Blunt Use Among Twitter Users: Racial/Ethnic Differences in Use Patterns and Characteristics

“…Further, over half of the African Americans in the current study reported getting “very high” from blunts (52.8%) and smoking blunts to relieve stress (59.2%). African Americans often experience a disproportionate level of stressors relative to other racial/ethnic groups (Dutta, Sastry, Dillard et al, 2016), such as racial discrimination (English, Lambert, Evans et al, 2014) and financial stress (Estrada-Martinez, Caldwell, Bauermeister, et al, 2012). It is plausible that the subjective high experienced from smoking blunts provides a temporary escape from the disproportionate levels of stress that are experienced among African Americans.…”

Bridging Theory to Practice: Utilizing the CultureCentered Approach (CCA) to Address Gaps in Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Processes

“…Conceptual co-optation of CBPR can often be used through cultural approaches to health campaigns such as cultural competence (CS), demonstrating healthcare professional adeptness at handling multicultural clientele and cultural sensitivity (CS), which offers communication solutions that fit the cultural agenda and health issues considered important by the health communicator (Dutta 2008, Dutta et al 2017. These oversights need to be interrogated for the tensions which they create between CBPR in theory versus CBPR in practice.…”

“…These oversights need to be interrogated for the tensions which they create between CBPR in theory versus CBPR in practice. The most prominent tensions that arise include the insider-outsider tension, inherent power differentials between partners, and the corrosion of trust in these interactions (Dillard et al 2014, Dutta et al 2017, Dutta et al 2013. As these concepts can have a direct and significant effect on the outcomes of CBPR campaign and longevity of trust development, it is pertinent that they are deconstructed in their everyday praxis.…”

“…The perceptions of authority, "expert" knowledge, academic background, and financial/ grant standing of a researcher may directly conflict with those of the community members and lead to very real power tensions. Community insiders could easily feel threatened by the power of the outsider to dictate the work (Minkler 2004, 2005, Dutta et al 2017. Insiders could easily find that it is the outsiders who stand to gain the most from any research project in terms of publishing, grant money, salary support, etc.…”

“…In defining community and the process through which communities come to be constituted, CBPR theoretically engages with the inherent power relations that emerge; through the interactions of resourcerich academics and in resource deprived communities. Some of the most common outcomes of such interactions include the selection of research topics and access to funding sources in supporting health communication projects, as these decisions have historically been made within the academic arena with little to no input from underserved populations (Airhihenbuwa 1995, Dutta 2008, Dutta et al 2017).…”