Are the daily stresses of living in some of the poorest neighborhoods in America struggling to cope with chronic ill health, to stay safe, to feed hungry kids written in the body at a cellular level?
Two-time CASBS Fellow Arline Geronimus (2007-08, 2014-15) investigated that question as the lead researcher in a team including a Nobel prize-winning UCSF biochemist, public health policy experts, and the Healthy Environments Partnership, a community-based participatory research group in Detroit. The collaboration married science with detailed local insight. It allowed researchers to gather an unprecedented set of data from a group of 239 adults in three impoverished neighborhoods.
“Because of the participation of the community organizations, we had respondents who agreed to provide blood samples, and from these we were able to compare telomere lengths,” said Geronimus.
A growing body of research has focused on using telomere length as a measure of biological rather than chronological age. Telomeres are a subset of leukocytes that function as stabilizing caps on chromosomes, protecting them from deterioration. Telomeres shorten with cell division to a point at which the chromosomes are functionally impaired. Studies have noted that telomere length differs in sets of twins over the life course, suggesting that each person’s life experience impacts the rate at which they age. Shorter telomere length has also been studied as a signal of higher risk of infection and chronic disease.
Their resulting research “Race-Ethnicity, Poverty, Urban Stressors, and Telomere Length in a Detroit Community-based Sample” (Journal of Health and Social Behavior), details stress responses measured at a cellular level via telomere length comparisons.
“We believe that the key to understanding racial, ethnic and socioeconomic health inequalities lies in studying the connections between social conditions and biological mechanisms,” Geronimus explained.
Following publication the research was covered at length in an article published online in The Huffington Post. The article, “Scientists find alarming deterioration in DNA of the Urban Poor” was shared widely on Facebook with more than ten thousand likes on the day, and thousands of tweets helping to spread news of the research Geronimus, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health and Research Professor, Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research an the University of Michigan; has spent the best part of two decades investigating the ‘weathering hypothesis’. Weathering is the process by which socially structured, repeated stress accumulates and increases health vulnerability across multiple body systems over the life course in marginalized groups.
“The weathering hypothesis suggests that the cumulative biological impact of being chronically exposed to, and having to cope with, socially structured stressors can increase health vulnerability and accelerate aging in marginalized populations.” (Geronimus 1992; Geronimus et al. 2006, 2010)
In an attempt to meet the threats of weathering, Geronimus has convened groups at CASBS in the past year to investigate Jedi Public Health (JPH) interventions. The goal of JPH is to alter everyday situational dynamics and settings in order to minimize discrediting cues and social exclusion, and disrupt the repeated physiological stress process activation that promotes weathering.