In each volume of the Journal, the editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript post-study interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides the authors the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. The associate editors who handled the articles conduct our Beyond the Manuscript interviews. Suzanne Grieb: My name is Suzanne Grieb. I’m a research fellow at the Center for Child and Community Health Research at the Johns Hopkins School and Medicine and I’m an associate editor with the journal. Today we will be discussing your paper Storytelling and Community Intervention Research: Lessons Learned from the Walk Your Heart to Health Intervention published in the Works in Progress in Lessons Learned section of the journal. So welcome.

Antihypertensive medication use protects against adverse health effects of hyper-tension. Residents of low-income urban communities are disproportionately Black and Latino, and may experience heightened cardiovascular health risks due to reduced medication use. We estimate the odds of antihypertensive medication use by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic position. Data are from the Healthy Environments Partnership Community Survey, restricted to 377 hypertensive participants. Antihypertensive medication use was defined as people with hypertension who were taking antihypertensive medication. Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences in medication use were examined using multivariate logistic regression. Odds of antihypertensive medication use were lower for people with incomes 1.00-1.99 times the poverty level (OR=0.75, p=.05) compared with those ≥2.00 times poverty, and for Latinos (OR=0.48, p<.01) and Whites (OR=0.50, p<.01) compared with Blacks. Findings suggest a need to improve hypertension screening and treatment for residents of low-to moderate-income urban communities, with attention to subgroups who may have limited health care access.

This study examines how Mexican-origin women construct and navigate racialized identities in a postindustrial northern border community during a period of prolonged restrictive immigration and immigrant policies, and it considers mechanisms by which responses to racialization may shape health. This grounded theory analysis involves interviews with 48 Mexican-origin women in Detroit, Michigan, who identified as being in the first, 1.5, or second immigrant generation. In response to institutions and institutional agents using racializing markers to assess their legal status and policing access to health-promoting resources, women engaged in a range of strategies to resist being constructed as an "other." Women used the same racializing markers or symbols of (il)legality that had been used against them as a malleable set of resources to resist processes of racialization and to form, preserve, and affirm their identities. These responses include constructing an authorized immigrant identity, engaging in immigration advocacy, and resisting stigmatizing labels. These strategies may have different implications for health over time. Findings indicate the importance of addressing policies that promulgate or exacerbate racialization of Mexican-origin communities and other communities who experience growth through migration. Such policies include creating pathways to legalization and access to resources that have been invoked in racialization processes, such as state-issued driver's licenses.

We examine racialization processes experienced by women of Mexican origin in a northern border community during a protracted period of restrictive immigrant policies that have disparately affected Mexican-origin communities, and consider pathways through which these experiences may affect health. This grounded theory analysis draws on interviews conducted in 2013–2014 with 48 first, 1.5, and second generation Mexican-origin women living in Detroit, MI. Racialization processes blurred boundaries between Latinas/os, immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. Racialized policies and interactions required women to negotiate shifting and often precarious social and political terrain. We describe racializing markers used by agents of multiple institutions to assess the legal status of women and members of their social networks, shaping their access to the resources over which institutional agents held power. Specifically, we consider the dynamic mechanisms by which multiple legal, social, and employment institutions exacted immigrant policing and bureaucratic surveillance. These include: (1) interior and border immigration enforcement agents’ active surveillance of residents; (2) local law enforcement officials’ assertion of authority over driver’s licenses and contact with immigration officials, often in traffic-related encounters; (3) Secretary of State clerks’ discretion in assessing legal status and issuing driver’s licenses and state IDs; (4) social welfare agents’ scrutiny of citizenship status in determining access to nutritional, economic, and medical resources; and (5) employers’ exploitation of these structural vulnerabilities to justify unfair treatment of immigrant workers. We theorize several mechanisms, by which these processes affect health, including: stigmatization; hypervigilance; and restricted access to health-promoting resources.

Background

Contextually and culturally congruent interventions are urgently needed to reduce racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in physical activity and cardiovascular disease.

Objectives

To examine a community-based participatory research (CBPR) process that incorporated storytelling into a physical activity intervention, and consider implications for reducing health inequities.

Methods

We used a CBPR process to incorporate storytelling in an existing walking group intervention. Stories conveyed social support and problem-solving intervention themes designed to maintain increases in physical activity over time, and were adapted to the walking group context, group dynamics, challenges, and traditions.

Lessons learned

After describing of the CBPR process used to adapt stories to walking group sites, we discuss challenges and lessons learned regarding the adaptation and implementation of stories to convey key intervention themes.

Conclusions

A CBPR approach to incorporating storytelling to convey intervention themes offers an innovative and flexible strategy to promote health toward the elimination of health inequities.

Objectives: The 21st century has seen a rise in racism and xenophobia in the United States. Few studies have examined the health implications of heightened institutional and interpersonal racism. This study examines changes in reported discrimination and associations with blood pressure over time among non-Latino Blacks (NLBs), Latinos, and non-Latino Whites (NLWs) in an urban area, and variations by nativity among Latinos.Design: Data from a probability sample of NLB, Latino, and NLW Detroit, Michigan residents were collected in 2002-2003, with follow-up at the same addresses in 2007-2008. Surveys were completed at 80% of eligible housing units in 2008 (n = 460). Of those, 219 participants were interviewed at both time points and were thus included in this analysis. Discrimination patterns across racial/ethnic groups and associations with blood pressure were examined using generalized estimating equations.Results: From 2002 to 2008, NLBs and Latinos reported heightened interpersonal and institutional discrimination, respectively, compared with NLWs. There were no differences in associations between interpersonal discrimination and blood pressure. Increased institutional discrimination was associated with stronger increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure for NLBs than NLWs, with no differences between Latinos and NLWs. Latino immigrants experienced greater increases in blood pressure with increased interpersonal and institutional discrimination compared to US-born Latinos.Conclusions: Together, these findings suggest that NLBs and Latinos experienced heightened discrimination from 2002 to 2008, and that increases in institutional discrimination were more strongly associated with blood pressure elevation among NLBs and Latino immigrants compared to NLWs and US-born Latinos, respectively. These findings suggest recent increases in discrimination experienced by NLBs and Latinos, and that these increases may exacerbate racial/ethnic health inequities.