The concept and measurement of race and their relationship to public health: a review focused on Brazil and the United States.

Race has been widely used in studies on health and healthcare inequalities, especially in the United States. Validity and reliability problems with race measurement are of concern in public health. This article reviews the literature on the concept and measurement of race and compares how the findings apply to the United States and Brazil. We discuss in detail the data quality issues related to the measurement of race and the problems raised by measuring race in multiracial societies like Brazil. We discuss how these issues and problems apply to public health and make recommendations about the measurement of race in medical records and public health research.

[1]  M. Nobles.  History counts: a comparative analysis of racial/color categorization in US and Brazilian censuses. , 2000, American journal of public health.

[2]  David R. Williams,et al.  Us socioeconomic and racial differences in health: patterns and explanations , 1995 .

[3]  M. Waters,et al.  Immigration, intermarriage, and the challenges of measuring racial/ethnic identities. , 2000, American journal of public health.

[4]  S M Teutsch,et al.  Inconsistencies in coding of race and ethnicity between birth and death in US infants. A new look at infant mortality, 1983 through 1985. , 1992, JAMA.

[5]  David R. Williams,et al.  Understanding and Reducing Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Health , 2000 .

[6]  E. Sondik,et al.  Race/ethnicity and the 2000 census: implications for public health. , 2000, American journal of public health.

[7]  McKenney Nr,et al.  Issues regarding data on race and ethnicity: the Census Bureau experience. , 1994 .

[8]  David R. Williams.  Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status: Measurement and Methodological Issues , 1996, International journal of health services : planning, administration, evaluation.

[9]  E. O. Wright.  Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis , 1996 .

[10]  T. Laveist.  Beyond dummy variables and sample selection: what health services researchers ought to know about race as a variable. , 1994, Health services research.

[11]  D. Harris,et al.  Who is Multiracial? Assessing the Complexity of Lived Race , 2002, American Sociological Review.

[12]  J. Kelsey,et al.  Use of race and ethnicity in epidemiologic research: concepts, methodological issues, and suggestions for research. , 2000, Epidemiologic reviews.

[13]  B. Horta,et al.  Ethnicity and infant health in Southern Brazil. A birth cohort study. , 2001, International journal of epidemiology.

[14]  Peter H Fry.  Politics, nationality, and the meanings of race in Brazil , 2000 .

[15]  David B. Goldstein,et al.  Population genetic structure of variable drug response , 2001, Nature Genetics.

[16]  R. Cooper.  GeneEnvironment Interactions and the Etiology of Common Complex Disease , 2003, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[17]  S. Rose,et al.  Lifelines: Biology Beyond Determinism , 1997 .

[18]  J. Kaufman.  How inconsistencies in racial classification demystify the race construct in public health statistics. , 1999, Epidemiology.

[19]  A. Templeton.  Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective , 1998 .

[20]  M. Tienda,et al.  The structuring of Hispanic ethnicity: Historical and contemporary perspectives* , 1985 .

[21]  A. L. Martins,et al.  Mulheres negras e mortalidade materna no estado do Paraná, Brasil, de 1993 a 1998 , 2000 .

[22]  C. Herring,et al.  Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community , 1991, American Journal of Sociology.

[23]  J. Jackson,et al.  Race/ethnicity and the 2000 census: recommendations for African American and other black populations in the United States. , 2000, American journal of public health.

[24]  B. D. Saúde..  Manual de doenças mais importantes, por razões étnicas, na população brasileira afro-descendente , 2001 .

[25]  Michael Hanchard.  Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil 1945-1988 , 1994 .

[26]  M. Laws,et al.  Racial and ethnic identification practices in public health data systems in New England. , 2002, Public health reports.

[27]  S. Schechter,et al.  Measuring our nation's diversity: developing a common language for data on race/ethnicity. , 2000, American journal of public health.

[28]  F. Fuchs,et al.  Reliability of race assessment based on the race of the ascendants: a cross-sectional study , 2002, BMC public health.

[29]  R. Henriques.  Desigualdade racial no Brasil: evolução das condições de vida na década de 90 , 2001 .

[30]  C. Wood,et al.  Skin Color, Racial Identity, and Life Chances in Brazil , 1998 .

[31]  M. Feldman,et al.  Genetic Structure of Human Populations , 2002, Science.

[32]  B. Smedley,et al.  BACKGROUND PAPER RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISPARITIES IN HEALTH CARE: A BACKGROUND AND HISTORY , 2003 .

[33]  M. Agier.  Racism, culture and black identity in Brazil , 1995 .

[34]  A. Goodman.  Why genes don't count (for racial differences in health). , 2000, American journal of public health.

[35]  Hua Tang,et al.  Categorization of humans in biomedical research: genes, race and disease , 2002, Genome Biology.

[36]  R. Schwartz.  Racial profiling in medical research. , 2001, The New England journal of medicine.

[37]  David R. Williams.  Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Health The Added Effects of Racism and Discrimination , 1999, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[38]  R. Cooper,et al.  Socioeconomic Status and Health in Blacks and Whites: The Problem of Residual Confounding and the Resiliency of Race , 1997, Epidemiology.

[39]  Marília Sá Carvalho,et al.  Fatores associados às internações hospitalares no Brasil , 2002 .

[40]  D. Williams,et al.  Race and health: basic questions, emerging directions. , 1997, Annals of epidemiology.

[41]  N. Krieger,et al.  Racial discrimination and skin color in the CARDIA study: implications for public health research. Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults. , 1998, American journal of public health.

[42]  Gleen C. Loury.  The anatomy of racial inequality: The author’s account , 2004 .

[43]  Roberto Motta.  Paradigmas de interpretação das relações raciais no Brasil , 2000 .

[44]  J. Lang,et al.  Who are the Whites?: Imposed census categories and the racial demography of Brazil. , 1993 .

[45]  P. Seed,et al.  Ethnic differences in the growth of low-birthweight infants. , 2000, Paediatric and perinatal epidemiology.

[46]  D. Williams,et al.  The concept of race and health status in America. , 1994, Public health reports.

[47]  Mark E. Hill,et al.  Color Differences in the Socioeconomic Status of African American Men: Results of a Longitudinal Study , 2000 .

[48]  The use of race in medical research. , 1992, JAMA.

[49]  Adrienne Y. Stith,et al.  Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care , 2005 .

[50]  A. Jensen,et al.  Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology [and Comments and Reply] , 1982, Current Anthropology.

[51]  M. C. Maio.  [Brazil within the concert of nations: the struggle against racism in the early days of Unesco]. , 1998, Historia, ciencias, saude--Manguinhos.

[52]  C. Bennett,et al.  Issues regarding data on race and ethnicity: the Census Bureau experience. , 1994, Public health reports.

[53]  R. Hahn,et al.  Inconsistencies in Coding of Race and Ethnicity Between Birth and Death in U.S. Infants: A New Look at Infant Mortality, 1983 Through 1985 , 1992 .

[54]  D. Porter.  "Enemies of the race": biologism, environmentalism, and public health in Edwardian England. , 1991, Victorian studies.

[55]  Cristina Torres.  Descendientes de africanos en la Región de las Américas y equidad en materia de salud , 2002 .

[56]  R. Bhopal,et al.  White, European, Western, Caucasian, or what? Inappropriate labeling in research on race, ethnicity, and health. , 1998, American journal of public health.

[57]  J. Eisenberg,et al.  Physician Utilization: The State of Research About Physicians’ Practice Patterns , 1985, Medical care.

[58]  J. N. W. Dachs.  Determinantes das desigualdades na auto-avaliação do estado de saúde no Brasil: análise dos dados da PNAD/1998 , 2002 .

[59]  C. Antunes,et al.  Color and genomic ancestry in Brazilians , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[60]  Li­vio Sansone.  Racismo sem Etnicidade: Polticas Pblicas e Discriminao Racial em Perspectiva Comparada , 1998 .

[61]  N. Krieger,et al.  Racism, sexism, and social class: implications for studies of health, disease, and well-being. , 1993, American journal of preventive medicine.