In a series of articles, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers indicate that adults in several minority groups face discrimination in many aspects of their lives.
In the midst of national debates on the extent of discrimination in the lives of Americans, a series of new national surveys led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that several groups—including blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, women, and LGBTQ adults—report facing significant discrimination across multiple areas of life, ranging from health care and microaggressions to housing and policing.
Individual research papers were included as part of a larger survey study conducted by Harvard Chan School, NPR, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They were published as a research collection in the December special issue of Health Services Research, Experiences of Discrimination in America: Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality.
“The public has been divided in recent years over whether discrimination is a major problem in America today, and these articles show they are very problematic from the lived experiences of adults from several minority groups,” said principal investigator and co-author Robert Blendon, Richard L. Menschel Professor of Public Health and Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at Harvard Chan School and director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program. “We know from other research that discrimination has harmful effects on health and well-being, and these studies document ongoing broad patterns of discrimination against adults from marginalized communities.”
The researchers analyzed survey data among subgroups of 3,453 U.S. adults, collected by phone between January and April 2017. The following articles are available in Open Access.
Blendon RJ. Introduction.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13219
Williams DR, Lawrence JA, Vu C, Davis BA. Understanding how discrimination can affect health.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13222
Benson JM, Ben-Porath EN, Casey LS. Methodology of the Discrimination in the United States survey.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13226
Bleich SN, Findling MG, Casey LS, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, SteelFisher GK, Sayde JM, Miller C. Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of black Americans.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13220
Findling MG, Bleich SN, Casey LS, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, Sayde JM, Miller C. Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Latinos.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13216
McMurtry CL, Findling MG, Casey LS, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, Sayde JM, Miller C. Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Asian Americans.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13225
Findling MG, Casey LS, Fryberg S, Hafner S, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, Sayde JM, Miller C, Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of Native Americans.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13224
SteelFisher GK, Findling MG, Bleich SN, Casey LS, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, Sayde JM, Miller C. Gender discrimination in the United States: Experiences of women.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13217
Casey LS, Reisner SL, Findling MG, Blendon RJ, Benson JM, Sayde JM, Miller C. Discrimination in the United States: Experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. and queer Americans.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13229
Blendon RJ, Casey LS. Discrimination in the United States: Perspectives for the future.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1475-6773.13218