Racism produces subtle brain changes that lead to increased disease risk in Black populations

Coping with everyday affronts comes at a cost and requires a certain level of emotional suppression. RyanJLane/E+ via Getty Images by Negar Fani, Emory University and Nathaniel Harnett, Harvard Medical School The U.S. is in the midst of a racial reckoning. The COVID-19 pandemic, which took a particularly heavy toll on Black communities, turned a harsh spotlight on long-standing health disparities that the public could no longer overlook. Although the health disparities for Black communities have been well known to researchers for decades, the pandemic put real names and faces to these numbers. Compared with White people, Black people are at much greater risk for developing a range of health problems, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia. For example, Black people are twice as likely as White people to develop Alzheimer’s disease. A vast and growing body of research shows that racism contributes to systems that promote health inequities. Most recently, our team has also learned that racism directly contributes to these inequities on a neurobiological level. We are clinical neuroscientists who study the multifaceted ways in which racism affects how our brains develop and function. We use brain imaging to study how trauma such as sexual assault or racial...