towards a gis model of institutional racism

• Naa Oyo A. Kwate (Sociomedical Sciences)
• Awarded:  Spring 2008

The negative health effects of multiple levels of racism for individuals of African descent have garnered increasing attention from researchers.  Although the emphasis has been at the level of perceived individual racism, many have offered theoretical elaborations of how institutional racism acts as a negative health determinant.  Institutional racism restricts access to societal rewards and resources including education, housing, labor markets and quality health care.  To date, there is little empirical research on neighborhood-level manifestations of institutional racism and how they contribute to morbidity and mortality. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the PHDCN’s archival video footage of Chicago neighborhoods in 1995. The study’s aims are to operationalize the variety of features that may characterize neighborhood institutional racism; to examine the quality as well as the quantity of retail and other business establishments in predominantly Black neighborhoods; and to determine the degree of concordance between street-level observation of retail density and enumeration of businesses from vendor databases. Taken together, this study will serve as the foundation for large-scale investigations of associations between neighborhood-level institutional racism and African American health behaviors and outcomes.