Black Lives Matter Principles as an Africentric Approach to Improving Black American Health
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Black Lives Matter Principles as an Africentric Approach to Improving Black American Health Kaston D. Anderson-Carpenter 1 Received: 23 May 2020 / Revised: 3 August 2020 / Accepted: 4 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Although public health has made substantial advances in closing the health disparity gap, Black Americans still experience inequalities and inequities. Several theoretical frameworks have been used to develop public health interventions for Black American health; yet the existing paradigms do not fully account for the ontology, epistemology, or axiology of Black American populations. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement provides a basis for understanding the constructs that may contribute to Black American health. By drawing from the 13 BLM principles, this paper presents an alternative approach for developing, implementing, and evaluating public health interventions for Black populations in the USA. Furthermore, the approach may inform future public health research and policies to reduce health disparities within and across Black populations in the USA. Keywords Public health interventions . African American . Black American . Population health . Health disparities . Black Lives Matter
“When Black people get free, everybody gets free.” ~Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement
Introduction Despite substantial improvements in reducing the health disparity gap in the USA, Black1 Americans still fare far worse than their White peers across almost every health indicator [1, 2]. These disparities often affect Black Americans as early as childhood and extend throughout the lifespan. Not only do Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy relative to their White counterparts [3, 4] but also social and 1
Although there is disagreement on whether to use Black or African American, I will use the Black identifier throughout this article to underscore that some people of African descent living in the USA are descendants of Africans from across the transatlantic slave trade.
* Kaston D. Anderson-Carpenter [email protected] 1
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
environmental determinants of health have a substantially harmful effect on Black Americans. Even among subgroups of Black American populations, such disparities exist. Black women experience greater decrements in health outcomes such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer compared with women from other racial/ethnic groups [1, 5]. Additionally, Black men who have sex with men (MSM) and Black transgender women have greater odds of housing instability, substance use, and incarceration relative to their heterosexual Black peers [6]. Numerous perspectives have delineated potential mechanisms to explain health disparities in Black American populations. Historically, public health is grounded in a postpositivist epistemology, which has allowed researchers and practitioners to examine the epidemiology of health conditions such as HIV, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity in Black communities. The ecological syste
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