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A new study suggests that African Americans attending historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs) may be at lower risk of health problems later in adulthood than African Americans attending predominantly white institutions.
Research showed that black adults who enrolled in an HBCU were 35 percent less likely to develop metabolic syndrome by middle age than black adults who enrolled in predominantly white schools. Additionally, the benefit of attending an HBCU was more pronounced in African Americans who grew up in more segregated settings.
Metabolic syndrome is defined as having at least three of the five factors that increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke: excess abdominal fat, high blood pressure, low “good” cholesterol, and high blood glucose and triglycerides.
“We have known for a long time that the more years of school someone completes, the better their health is likely to be over the course of their lives, but very little research has been done on the different contexts of education and their impact on subsequent health outcomes. “said Cynthia Colen, lead author of the study and associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University.
“This study really points to a strength of HBCUs that people don’t normally think of: not only can they protect health, but they can be protective for health for years to come, not just while people are in school.”
Colen conducted the study with Nicolo Pinchak, an Ohio State sociology graduate student, and Kierra Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Ohio State Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. The research is published online in American Journal of Epidemiology.
The team used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which consists of periodic interviews with people who were middle and high school students in grades 7-12 in 1994-95. Colen specifically used the information gathered during follow-up interviews conducted in 1996, 2001 and 2008.
The 727 black respondents in the final sample of the study attended a total of 319 higher education institutions: 273 predominantly white institutions and 46 HBCUs. The National Center for Education Statistics describes historically black colleges and universities as “institutions established prior to 1964 with the primary mission of educating Black Americans.”
This national survey (Add Health) collected detailed health data across all waves of interviews, providing Ohio State researchers with the specific measures they used to assess whether Add Health respondents had developed metabolic syndrome by 2008, when they were between 20 and 30 years old. .
Colen and colleagues built statistical models to determine the extent to which the presence of HBCU was associated with metabolic syndrome in middle age. These models controlled for a number of characteristics that could affect both HBCU enrollment and adult health, such as age, gender, and region of the country, as well as a range of family, school, and neighborhood conditions they experienced. during their childhood.
The analysis showed that 31% of respondents who attended predominantly white institutions suffered from metabolic syndrome by middle age, compared with 23% of those who attended HBCU, and that HBCU participation was associated with a reduction in 35% chance of having metabolic syndrome among college-educated African Americans. The researchers noted that this type of health benefit mirrors the reduction in risk that scientific studies suggest people can achieve through changing diet or exercise.
Overall, nearly 30% of college-educated black adults in the study sample developed metabolic syndrome at the time of interviews in 2008, when they were still relatively young.
“This is the lifespan, when people are in their 30s to 40s, when we see the fastest growing health disparities between blacks and whites. This is largely driven by the emergence of disease. chronic diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity, ”Colen said.
What’s noteworthy about this particular study is that college-educated African Americans weren’t compared to whites – which was a strength of this research, he said, “Here, we’re looking at how health is unequally distributed among African Americans. And we identify HBCUs as an opportunity not only for upward mobility, but as a potential engine of better health throughout life for people who have spent their formative years in these types. of higher education institutions “.
Although the available data cannot explain why or how HBCU alumni’s risk of metabolic syndrome is lower than those who attended predominantly white schools, Colen has some possible theories: At HBCUs, black students interact regularly with faculty, staff and students African Americans who can serve as mentors, and are less likely to be chronically exposed to the racial discrimination that has been shown to erode both mental and physical health years after people first encounter this kind of unfair treatment.
Likewise, researchers can only speculate as to why the health protection benefits of HBCUs are stronger for black adults who grew up in more segregated environments.
“Our findings suggest that HBCUs are likely to protect health for the segment of society that needs it most – those who grow up in the most racially isolated environments,” the researchers noted. “Furthermore, this finding underscores the important role that place in general and segregation in particular play in the unequal distribution of health.”
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