Health Effects of Race, Gender, Class, and Place: Complexities and Heterogeneities

Dear Colleagues,

Race, gender, class, and place shape the physical and mental health of populations in multiple ways. Differential exposure and differential vulnerability are two main hypotheses that have explained how race, gender, class, and place get under people’s skin. According to the differential exposure hypothesis, these fundamental factors determine exposure to a wide range of risk and protective factors that have health implications. In this view, distribution of risk and protective factors are not random but follows a social gradient. According to this hypothesis, differential exposure mediates the group differences in health based on these fundamental factors. According to the differential vulnerability hypothesis, our race, gender, class, and place shape the vulnerability and resilience of populations to a certain or combination of risk or protective factors. Based on this hypothesis, the effects of risk factors are not universal but specific to social groups.

However, the story is more complex.  For some outcomes, class interacts with race and gender, and for some others, class explains the effect of race and gender on health. The meanings and implications of race and gender also change across populations and settings including cohorts. Furthermore, countries differ in the role of gender, race, and class in peoples’ lives. For instance, in the United States income may be the most salient social determinant of health and the same could be said about education in Western Europe. Education may not have the same effect in rural and urban areas, and race is more salient in Southern parts of the United States. The intersection of race, gender, class, and place have effects which are different from algebraic sums of their effects. For instance, in the United States, the experiences of Black men are very different from Black women. Finally, race-, class-, and gender- lines may compete with each other in shaping some health behaviors and outcomes.

The findings have major clinical, public health, and policy implications. Results are expected to extend the field of health disparities by discovering new mechanisms behind health disparities. Some findings may advocate for local rather than universal policies, programs, and interventions. They may suggest that tailored interventions and programs that are targeted to the specific needs of socio-demographic groups (e.g., based on race, gender, and class) may have higher acceptability and efficacy than programs that ignore the between- and within-group heterogeneities in the mechanisms that shape health and illness.

The Special Issue “Health Effects of Race, Gender, Class, and Place: Complexities and Heterogeneities” invites state-of-the-art original and review articles on the above-mentioned topics. Potential papers of interest include: 1) studies testing differential exposure or differential vulnerability; 2) studies testing additive and multiplicative effects; 3) studies that compare countries or locations within countries; 4) studies that report mediators or moderators of disparities; 5) studies on tailored interventions for sub-populations; 6) studies using a national sample, or using longitudinal design; 7) studies using an intersectionality approach; and 8) studies on measurement and methodology issues.

Dr. Shervin Assari
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Healthcare is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) has been waived for publication in this Special Issue.