The inverse hazard law: Blood pressure, sexual harassment, racial discrimination, workplace abuse and occupational exposures in US low-income black, white and Latino workers☆
Section snippets
Study population and protocol: the United for Health cohort
As described in detail in our prior publications (Barbeau et al., 2007, Krieger et al., 2005, Krieger et al., 2006, Quinn et al., 2007), we recruited participants in the United for Health study from the rosters of union members employed in 14 worksites located in the greater Boston area in Massachusetts and variously engaged in meat processing, electrical light manufacturing, retail grocery stores, and school bus driving. The unions and management had no access to the study data and no role in
Results
Table 1 shows the distribution of the outcome and selected exposures and key covariates among the 1202 members of the United for Health cohort, overall and by race/ethnicity, prior to imputing missing values. As presented in more detail in Supplemental Table 1 and in our previous papers (Barbeau et al., 2007, Krieger et al., 2005, Krieger et al., 2006), the findings reveal high levels of economic deprivation and of exposure to social and occupational hazards (79% to at least 1 social hazard,
Discussion
Among the 1202 low-income multi-racial/ethnic working class participants in our cohort – of whom 40% lived below the US poverty line, 79% reported exposure to at least one social hazard and 82% at least one high-exposure occupational hazard – only sexual harassment, the least common social hazard, was associated with elevated SBP among the women workers. By contrast, no statistically significant associations were detectable between the other additional highly prevalent social and occupational
References (50)
- et al.
Distancing oneself from negative attributes and the personal/group discrimination discrepancy
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2002) Racial and gender discrimination: risk factors for high blood pressure?
Social Science & Medicine
(1990)Epidemiology and the web of causation: has anyone seen the spider?
Social Science & Medicine
(1994)- et al.
Experiences of discrimination: validity and reliability of a self-report measure for population health research on racism and health
Social Science & Medicine
(2005) - et al.
Developmental determinants of blood pressure in adults
Annual Review of Nutrition
(2005) - et al.
Job strain and prevalence of hypertension in a biracial population of urban bus drivers
American Journal of Public Health
(1992) Draft American national standard: Evaluating the effectiveness of hearing conservation programs – Acoustical
(1991)Characteristics of the healthy worker effect
Occupational Medicine
(2001)- et al.
Methods for recruiting white, black, and Hispanic working class women and men to a study of physical and social hazards at work: the United for Health Study
International Journal of Health Services
(2007) - et al.
Disparities in occupational and environmental exposures and health
The seventh report of the joint national committee on prevention, detection, evaluation, and treatment of high blood pressure: the JNC 7 report
Journal of the American Medical Association
Stress-related racial discrimination and hypertension likelihood in a population-based sample of African Americans: the Metro Atlanta Heart Disease Study
Ethnicity and Disease
Main questionnaire
Epidemiology standardization project
American Review of Respiratory Disease
Measuring sexual harassment: theoretical and psychometric advances
Basic Applied Social Psychology
The inverse care law
Lancet
A five-item measure of socially desirable response set
Educational Psychology Measurement
Recognition processes in sexual harassment, bullying, and violence at work: the move to organization violations
Vascular effects of ambient pollutant particles and metals
Current Vascular Pharmacology
Reproducibility of survey results from a study of occupation-related respiratory health in the aluminum industry
Applied Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
Job content questionnaire and user's guide
The influence of the work environment on cardiovascular health: a historical, conceptual, and methodological perspective
Journal of Occupational Health Psychology
Analyzing incomplete political science data: an alternative algorithm for multiple imputation
American Political Science Review
Embodying inequality: a review of concepts, measures, and methods for studying health consequences of discrimination
International Journal of Health Services
Cited by (0)
- ☆
This study was supported by NIOSH grants R01 OHO7366-01 and R01 OHO7366-01S. The authors wish to thank: (a) other contributing members of the study team (in alphabetical order): Louiza Bloomstein, Vanessa Costa, Ruth Lederman, Maribel Melendez, Deepa Naishadham, Michael Ostler, Elizabeth Pratt, Roona Ray, Grace Sembajwe, David Wilson, and Richard Youngstrom; (b) our union and worksite collaborators; and (c) the workers who shared their experiences with us by participating in this study.
- 1
At time of study: Center for Community-Based Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
- 2
At time of study: Harvard School of Public Health and Center for Community-Based Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA.