What is it about?
Social and cultural factors play an important - but understudied - role in health behaviors. We were interested in understanding how "communalism" (the tendency to emphasize positive group relations) affected the relationship between racial centrality and the use of emergency services for treating sickle cell pain. We found that high levels of racial centrality were associated with less emergency department utilization only when communalism was low.
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Why is it important?
People with sickle cell disease experience severe pain. At the same time, they often experience discrimination and stigma when they are in pain. We need to understand why some people with sickle cell do not seek health services when they are in pain; if it is because of a fear of being stigmatized or discriminated against, then we need interventions to address these perceptions - both for patients and health care providers.
Perspectives
My co-author, Chey Harris, was an undergraduate psychology major at Morgan State University when we worked on this project. He spent the summer of 2016 in my lab as part of the ASCEND program (Morgan's STEM BUILD grant from the National Institutes of Health). It was a joy to work with and mentor him.
Shawn Bediako
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Communalism Moderates the Association Between Racial Centrality and Emergency Department Use for Sickle Cell Disease Pain, Journal of Black Psychology, March 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0095798417696785.
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