Category: Racial Issues

Years of research show black patients getting less treatment in the American health care system than their white counterparts, but a new study suggests that a quick dose of empathy helps close racial gaps in pain treatment.

College students and nurses went to greater lengths to ease the pain of members of their own race in a study led by Brian Drwecki, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"I want to be very clear about this: We're not saying health care professionals are racist," Drwecki says. "This is not racism. Racism is a conscious act of hate. We find it very unlikely that health care professionals are aware that they are making these biases, let alone trying to actively hurt black patients."

Empathy emerged as a strong unconscious factor driving racial bias in pain treatment in the study, published online in February in the journal Pain by Drwecki and colleagues from UW-Madison and the University of Northern British Columbia.

Study subjects watched the faces of shoulder pain sufferers in videos recorded while the patients were being put through range-of-motion tests. After assessing the patients' grimaces and furrowed brows, the study participants doled out treatment (pain medication, physical therapy, massage and acupuncture) in varying amounts.

White participants ordered significantly more pain treatment for white patients, and scored higher on tests measuring the empathy they felt for the patients who received preferential treatment. Despite a vast difference in experience and knowledge — the students had no medical training, while nurses are often directly involved in trying to monitor pain and keep patients comfortable — the two groups showed very similar biases.

"The students' results were consistent with the nurses' results, supporting the idea that individuals are predisposed to racial bias in pain treatment before or after health care training," Drwecki says.

The researchers have a promising, simple and cheap prescription for the problem. Simply asking the students and nurses to briefly put themselves in their patients' shoes had a drastic effect on their decisions.

"With half of our participants, we said, 'Before you make your treatment decisions, spend a moment imagining how your patient feels about his or her pain and how this pain is affecting his or her life,'" Drwecki says.

The quick shift of perspective reduced the pain treatment gap by 98 percent for the students and 55 percent among the nurses in the study, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"The cool thing is, as humans, we can increase our empathy," Drwecki says. "You may not be the most naturally empathic person, but you can try these interventions and feel them working. Yes, this study demonstrates that racial bias in pain treatment exists, but, more importantly, it teaches us that it's not inevitable."

Moreover, Drwecki believes empathy's role in health care — in treatment decisions like pain therapy and factors such as emergency room wait times — is ripe for more study.

"There are numerous studies showing similar effects in the real world," Drwecki said. "It's time to not only accept that these racial biases exist, but also to figure out how to eliminate them."

 African American people who identify more strongly with their racial identity are generally happier, according to a study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University.

The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, appears in the current issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, a research journal published by the American Psychological Association.

"This is the first empirical study we know of that shows a relationship between racial identity and happiness," said Stevie C.Y. Yap, doctoral candidate in psychology at MSU and lead researcher on the project.

Previous research has found a relationship between racial identity and favorable outcomes such as self-esteem, Yap said, but none has made the link with happiness.

For the study, the researchers surveyed black adults in Michigan. The results suggest the more the participants identified with being black — or the more being black was an important part of who they are — the more happy they were with life as a whole, Yap said.

The study also explored the reasons behind the connection. Yap said it may be fueled by a sense of belongingness — that is, blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy.

This sense of belongingness is especially important for happiness in women, Yap said.

"For men, the potential factors relating identity to happiness is still an open question," he said.

Yap's fellow researchers are Isis Settles, MSU associate professor of psychology, and Jennifer Pratt-Hyatt, assistant professor of psychology at Northwest Missouri State University.

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Journal Reference:

1. Stevie C. Y. Yap, Isis H. Settles, Jennifer S. Pratt-Hyatt. Mediators of the relationship between racial identity and life satisfaction in a community sample of African American women and men.. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2011; 17 (1): 89 DOI: 10.1037/a0022535

Just as the constant pressure soldiers face on the battlefield can follow them home in the form of debilitating stress, African Americans who face chronic exposure to racial discrimination may have an increased likelihood of suffering a race-based battle fatigue, according to Penn State researchers.

African Americans who reported in a survey that they experienced more instances of racial discrimination had significantly higher odds of suffering generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) some time during their lives, according to Jose Soto, assistant professor, psychology.

Generalized anxiety disorder has both psychological and physical symptoms that are so severe that they can significantly affect everyday tasks and job performance. People with the disorder may have chronic worrying, intrusive thoughts and difficulty concentrating. Physically, the disorder may manifest such symptoms as tension headaches, extreme fatigue and ulcers. Some of these symptoms are associated with "racial battle fatigue," a term coined by William A. Smith, associate professor, University of Utah.

"The results of our study suggest that the notion of racial battle fatigue could be a very real phenomenon that might explain how individuals can go from the experience of racism to the experience of a serious mental health disorder," said Soto. "While the term is certainly not trying to say that the conditions are exactly what soldiers face on a battlefield, it borrows from the idea that stress is created in chronically unsafe or hostile environments."

The researchers, who reported their findings in the current issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, examined data from the National Survey of American Life, a study of 5,899 American adults. The study collected data on, among other topics, mental health and experiences of discrimination from 3,570 African Americans (60.5 percent of the total study population), 1,438 Afro-Caribbeans (24.4 percent) and 891 non-Hispanic Whites (15.1 percent).

Of the African Americans surveyed, more than 40 percent reported they experienced some form of racial discrimination, and approximately 4.5 percent reported suffering from GAD. About 39 percent of Afro-Caribbeans reported examples of racial discrimination, but only 2.69 percent had ever developed GAD.

The experience of racial discrimination, however, was not associated with GAD for Afro-Caribbeans. Soto, who worked with Nana Dawson, graduate student in psychology and Rhonda BeLue, assistant professor, health policy and administration, suggested that because Afro-Caribbeans have a different history from African Americans, they may both define and manage racial discrimination differently.

While non-Hispanic whites had higher rates of generalized anxiety disorder than both African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans, only 7.79 percent of non-Hispanic whites reported incidents of racial discrimination. Although experiences of racial discrimination among non-Hispanic whites were not associated with the development of GAD, experiencing other forms of discrimination, such as age and gender discrimination, was associated with the disorder.

"One interesting finding from the study is that non-racial discrimination seems to be associated with the development of GAD for all three groups in the sample," Soto said. "About 49 percent of non-Hispanic whites said they suffered other forms of discrimination."

Soto said the connection between racism and severe anxiety underscores the negative impact that discrimination has on society.

"This is just one instance of how powerful social stressors can impact healthy functioning," Soto said. "And I would suspect, if we could wave a wand and eliminate racism from our past and our present, we would also eliminate a lot of health disparities."

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Journal Reference:

1. José A. Soto, Nana A. Dawson-Andoh, Rhonda BeLue. The relationship between perceived discrimination and Generalized Anxiety Disorder among African Americans, Afro Caribbeans, and non-Hispanic Whites. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 201

People in marginalized groups, such as the disabled or racial minorities, feel stigmatized — condemned, feared, or excluded — when other people stigmatize them. That's obvious. But they can also feel stigma when nobody blatantly discriminates against them or says a negative word.

These folks aren't paranoid, suggests a new study of HIV-positive people and their communities to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science. Rather, they're picking up subtle clues from their communities.

"Society is changing when it comes to prejudice," says psychological scientist Carol Miller, who conducted the study with University of Vermont colleagues Kristin Grover, Janice Bunn, and Sondra Solomon. "Most people don't want to be prejudiced" — yet the culture teaches us bias, and despite ourselves, "sometimes we express it. "

In the effort to suppress prejudice, motives vary. "Internally motivated" people value tolerance and abhor stereotyping. The "externally motivated" respond to social pressure. In either group, bias can "leak out," says Miller. But those who harbor more prejudice are more likely to experience anti-discriminatory norms as coercive, or "politically correct" — and want to disregard them.

In an age where blatant discrimination is rare, how might these motivations, expressed by communities, affect their potential objects? To get at the answer, the researchers assessed various communities for the social conditions that allow their members with HIV/AIDS feel safe — or not — to disclose their disease to others.

The team recruited 203 New Englanders with HIV/AIDS. Most were men, and about half were gay or bisexual; they'd lived with the disease an average of 11 years. The participants answered 19 questions assessing their experiences of "enacted stigma" (for instance, "I have lost friends by telling them that I have HIV/AIDS") and their "disclosure concerns" ("I worry that people who know will tell others").

Within the next eight weeks, the researchers randomly selected about 12 adults from each of the communities where the participants with HIV/AIDS lived and interviewed them by phone about community life and their feelings and behavior toward people with AIDS. The questions were designed to tease out whether the respondent's motivation to act tolerantly was internal or external. The results were tabulated to characterize each community the same way.

The people with HIV/AIDS experienced few overt acts of discrimination, the study found. Yet many still were reluctant to reveal their disease.

What made the difference? It was the community's source of motivation. People with HIV/AIDS felt the most need for secrecy in communities where people felt more social and less personal pressure to avoid being prejudiced.

The study has implications both for communities and their members with HIV/AIDS. "If we want to change community attitudes, we need to be careful," says Miller, "Because if all we do is make people feel pressured, we might be making it worse instead of better."

As for the people with HIV/AIDS, Miller doesn't second-guess their anxieties. Still, she suggests, risk-taking can yield rewards. "If in fact you are in a community where people would like to accept and support you, if you don't disclose, you never give them the opportunity."

More than 45 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, National Science Foundation (NSF) statistics show minority academic institutions still enroll a substantial number of minority students, but the percentage of minorities earning bachelor's degrees in science and engineering (S&E) from minority-serving institutions has declined over time.

Statistics published February 28in a report titled "Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2011" show that 26 percent of blacks earned S&E bachelor's degrees from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in 2000, while only 20 percent earned them from HBCUs in 2008.

Published by NSF's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), formerly the Division of Science Resources Statistics, the report charts the participation of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering education and employment.

According to the report's findings, underrepresented minorities–blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians–are less likely than whites to attend college or to graduate. About 53 percent of blacks and 35 percent of Hispanics versus 68 percent of whites attend college, while 19 percent of blacks and 12 percent of Hispanics versus 37 percent of whites graduate.

But for those underrepresented minorities who do graduate, the degree patterns are similar to those of whites. In fact, the shares of S&E bachelor's and master's degrees for underrepresented minorities have been rising for two decades since 1989.

For example, underrepresented minorities received 10 percent of S&E bachelor's degrees in 1989 compared to 17 percent in 2008.

Underrepresented minorities' participation in social-behavioral, computer and medical-other life sciences has increased faster than in other S&E fields.

The participation of blacks is substantially lower in S&E occupations, as well as in all professional and related science occupations than it is in the U.S. workforce as a whole. Blacks, who are about 12 percent of the U.S. population, make up only about 3 percent of all U.S. scientists and engineers. Moreover, they are a smaller percentage of engineers than they are of scientists.

Meanwhile, the share of full-time full S&E professorships held by underrepresented minorities has risen more slowly than the share held by women and has remained fairly flat in recent years.

Underrepresented minority women, who hold faculty positions, are less likely to have received federal grants or contracts than underrepresented minority men and women of other racial and ethnic groups.

This report is available online through the NCSES homepage of the National Science Foundation's website.

— Adolescence can herald the onset of major depression and the associated short- and long-term consequences including developmental and social impairment. Research that focuses on access to treatment for adolescents with depression can shine a bright light on the persistent disparities based on race and ethnicity. Unfortunately such research reinforces the fact that equitable mental health care across all individuals and communities has yet to be achieved.

In a study in the February 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), researchers from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia analyzed five years of data (2004-2008) collected from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The study evaluated a national representative sample of 7,704 adolescents, from 12 to 17 years of age, who were diagnosed with major depression within the past year. Researchers studied the differences in treatment for depression across four racial/ethnic groups of adolescents with major depression (i.e., non-Hispanic whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians).

The NSDUH samples non-institutionalized individuals 12 years and older from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey is conducted annually, in both English and Spanish, and is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

In their article, Dr. Janet R. Cummings and Dr. Benjamin G. Druss report that after adjusting for demographics and health status, the percentage of non-Hispanic whites who received any major depression treatment was 40% compared with 32% in blacks, 31% in Hispanics, and 19% in Asians. Black, Hispanic, and Asian adolescents were also significantly less likely than non-Hispanic whites to receive treatment for major depression from mental health professionals, to receive treatment for major depression from medical providers, and to have any mental health outpatient visits, with Asians exhibiting the lowest rate of service use on each measurement.

The adjustment for socioeconomic status and health insurance status accounted for only a small portion of the estimated differences in major depression treatment measurements and outpatient utilization across racial/ethnic groups. Other factors, such as stigma and limited proficiency in English, possibly contributed to the lower rates of service use in Hispanics and Asians.

Notably, one fourth of all adolescents with major depression received school-based counseling. Dr. Cummings and Dr. Druss state that, "Investment in quality improvement programs implemented in primary care settings as well as school-based mental health services may reduce unmet need for mental health services in all adolescents with major depression and reduce the sizeable differences in service use across racial/ethnic groups." Furthermore the researchers report, "Unlike treatment in outpatient settings, we did not find any significant racial/ethnic differences in the receipt of inpatient treatment."

In a related editorial Dr. Nicholas J. Carson states, "Given the serious consequences of depression, which are not limited to suicide, substance abuse, and academic failure, these low rates are tragic." Dr. Carson continues, "Future research will also need to clarify how a disproportionately low supply of mental health providers in minority communities affects disparities in access to services."

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Journal References:

1. Janet R. Cummings, Benjamin G. Druss. Racial/Ethnic Differences in Mental Health Service Use Among Adolescents With Major Depression. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2011; 50 (2): 160 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2010.11.004
2. Nicholas J. Carson. The Devil You Know: Revealing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Treatment of Adolescent Depression. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2011; 50 (2): 106 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2010.11.012

 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders may be at higher risk for hemorrhagic stroke at a younger age and more likely to have diabetes compared to other ethnicities, according to a new study being presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 63rd Annual Meeting in Honolulu April 9 to April 16, 2011.

"Racial differences in stroke risk factors have been well-studied in Hispanic and African-American populations, but this is the first study to address people of Native Hawaiian ethnicity," said study author Kazuma Nakagawa, MD, with The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu.

Data on 573 people hospitalized for intracerebral hemorrhage was taken from the "Get with the Guidelines-Stroke" database from The Queen's Medical Center over a period of six years. Of those, 18 percent were Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, 63 percent were Asian, 16 percent were Caucasian, 0.2 percent were African-American and three percent were described as other.

On average, Native Hawaiians who experienced a hemorrhagic stroke were around the age of 55, more than 10 years younger than those from other racial groups which had a combined average age of 67 when a stroke occurred. More Native Hawaiians also had diabetes; 35 percent compared to other racial groups at 21 percent. There were no differences in gender or other cardiovascular risk factors between the groups.

"Knowing risk factors for certain populations is an important step toward recognizing, treating and preventing stroke. More research needs to be done to determine which factors are contributing to stroke at such a young age in Native Hawaiians," said Nakagawa.

The study was supported by the Queen Emma Research Fund and the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Has Valentine's Day become post-racial? Not yet, it seems.

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that when it comes to dating, cyberspace is as segregated as the real world. Data gathered from more than 1 million profiles of singles looking for love online show that whites overwhelmingly prefer to date members of their own race, while blacks, especially men, are far more likely to cross the race barrier in hopes of being struck by Cupid's arrow.

UC Berkeley researchers analyzed the racial preferences and online activity of people from the United States who subscribed between 2009 and 2010 to a major Internet dating service. In their profiles, the online daters stated a racial preference. Some said they preferred to date only within their race, others preferred someone outside their race, and yet others said they were open to dating someone of any race.

Researchers were then able to compare the online daters' stated preferences with whom they actually contacted for a date, and they found profound differences between blacks and whites.

"Those who said they were indifferent to the race of a partner were most likely to be young, male and black," said Gerald Mendelsohn, a UC Berkeley psychologist, professor of graduate studies and lead author of the study, which will soon be submitted for publication.

Overall, he said, "Whites more than blacks, women more than men and old more than young participants stated a preference for a partner of the same race,"

The reluctance of whites to contact blacks was true even for those who claimed they were indifferent to race. More than 80 percent of the whites contacted whites and fewer than 5 percent of them contacted blacks, a disparity that held for young as well as for older participants.

"Were they hypocritical? Alert to the realities of the social world? Striving for political correctness? Attempting an optimizing strategy of self-presentation? Our data do not permit us to choose among those alternatives," the study authors wrote.

The study's coauthors are Lindsay Shaw Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley; Andrew T. Fiore, a graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Information who is currently a visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University and Coye Cheshire, an assistant professor in the School of Information.

An estimated one in five Americans has used an online dating service such as eHarmony or match.com, and a growing number of urbanites are finding romance via Facebook and other social networking sites. The percentage of couples who have met online is now nearly equal to that of pairs who met through friends or family, according to the researchers.

"As the use of online dating services grows, people whose paths never would have crossed offline now regularly meet and have meaningful exchanges in the virtual world," the UC Berkeley study says.

The last 40 years have seen a dramatic shift in attitudes in America toward black-white intermarriage — from three to one opposed to three to one in favor, said Mendelsohn. Yet, 2000 U.S. Census data shows that black-white couples represent just 1 percent of American marriages, he said.

The main findings of this study parallel the census data on marriage in that blacks are more likely than whites to be in interracial marriages, and that couples in which the husband is black and the wife is white are more common than those in which the husband is white and the wife is black, according to Mendelsohn.

"One theory is that blacks are acting like other minority populations in the history of this country," Mendelsohn said. "They are interested in moving up in the power structure, and one way you do that is through intermarriage with the dominant group."

According to the study, more than 80 percent of the online dating contacts initiated by whites were to other whites, with only 3 percent going to blacks. This trend held for both men and women, young and old. Although black participants initiated contact to members of their own race more than to whites, they were ten times more likely to contact whites than vice versa, according the the study.

The researchers also tracked the rates of reciprocation among the pool of online daters, looking at how they responded once they received a message from an interested potential partner. Again, white men and women were most likely to respond to members of their own race, and only 5 percent of their responses went to blacks.

A major objective of the study was to gauge how changing attitudes about interracial marriage and an increase in dating opportunities have played out in relationships between blacks and whites. Also of interest to researchers was the question of whether the Obama presidency signals that the United States has entered a post-racial era.

"It is clear that we are not yet in the post-racial era, and evidence from studies of online dating suggest that waiting for its arrival will take some patience," the study concludes.

 People living in the "stroke belt" states eat more fried fish than people living in the rest of the country, which may contribute to the high rate of death from stroke in those states, according to a study published in the Dec. 22, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Studies have shown that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish, especially fatty fish, may reduce the risk of stroke. Research has shown that frying fish leads to the loss of the natural fatty acids.

The study also found that African-Americans and people living in the stroke belt eat more fried fish than Caucasians and people living in the rest of the country. The stroke belt includes the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. People living in the stroke belt are more likely to die from a stroke than people living in other parts of the country.

"These differences in fish consumption may be one of the potential reasons for the racial and geographic differences in stroke incidence and mortality," said study author Fadi Nahab of Emory University in Atlanta and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study involved 21,675 people participating in the Reasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, with an average age of 65. Of the participants, 21 percent were from the "stroke buckle," which is the coastal plain region of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia with stroke mortality rates even higher than in the rest of the stroke belt. Another 34 percent were from the rest of the stroke belt and 44 percent were from the other 40 contiguous states.

Participants were interviewed by phone and then given an in-home physical examination. They took a questionnaire asking how often they ate oysters, shellfish, tuna, fried fish and other fish not fried.

In the entire study, fewer than 1 in 4 participants consumed two or more servings of non-fried fish per week. The American Heart Association recommends that people eat fish at least two times per week with an emphasis on fatty fish. Those in the stroke buckle were 11 percent less likely to meet the recommendations than those in the rest of the country. Those in the rest of the stroke belt were 17 percent less likely than those in the rest of the country.

African-Americans were more than three-and-a-half times more likely to eat two or more servings of fried fish per week than Caucasians, with an overall average of 0.96 servings per week of fried fish for African-Americans compared to 0.47 servings for Caucasians.

Those in the stroke belt were 30 percent more likely to eat two or more servings of fried fish than those in the rest of the country. Those in the rest of the stroke buckle were 17 percent more likely to eat two or more servings of fried fish. Overall, those in the stroke belt ate an average of 0.68 servings per week, compared to 0.64 in the stroke buckle and 0.62 in the rest of the country. For non-fried fish, those in the stroke belt ate an average of 1.45 servings per week, compared to 1.52 servings in the stroke buckle and 1.63 servings in the rest of the country.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Funding was provided by General Mills for coding of the food frequency questionnaire.

The REGARDS study enrolled participants across the United States, age 45 or older, between January 2003 and October 2007.

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Journal Reference:

1. F. Nahab, A. Le, S. Judd, M.R. Frankel, J. Ard, P.K. Newby, V.J. Howard. Racial and geographic differences in fish consumption: The REGARDS Study. Neurology, 2010; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182061afb

— Menthol cigarettes may be harder to quit, particularly for some teens and African-Americans, who have the highest menthol cigarette use, according to a study by a team of researchers.

Recent studies have consistently found that racial/ethnic minority smokers of menthol cigarettes have a lower quit rate than comparable smokers of regular cigarettes, particularly among younger smokers.

One possible reason suggested in the report is that the menthol effect is influenced by economic factors — less affluent smokers are more affected by price increases, forcing them to consume fewer cigarettes per day.

"This pattern of results is consistent with an effect that relies on menthol to facilitate increased nicotine intake from fewer cigarettes where economic pressures restrict the number of cigarettes smokers can afford to purchase," said Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D., professor, Public Health Sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, and an author of the report.

Menthol is a compound extracted from mint oils or produced synthetically that activates cold-sensitive neurons in the nervous system. Menthol cigarettes make up about 25 percent of the market but are preferred by certain subgroups of smokers, including about half of teenage smokers and 80 percent of African-American smokers.

Research has shown that menthol cigarettes may provide higher levels of carbon monoxide, nicotine and cotinine per cigarette smoked than regular cigarettes.

"Menthol stimulates cold receptors, so it produces a cooling sensation," Foulds said. "This effect may help smokers inhale more nicotine per cigarette and so become more addicted. In effect it helps the poison go down easier.

"The smoker who has reduced their cigarette consumption typically compensates by increasing inhalation per cigarette. Menthol in cigarettes makes the smoke less harsh, enabling these smokers to obtain a larger and more reinforcing nicotine hit."

The researchers, who published their results in a special issue of the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, reviewed the evidence from 10 published studies that compared smoking cessation rates or proportions between mentholated and regular cigarette smokers.

Not all of the studies included in the report found an effect of menthol on quitting, and no studies to date have been specifically designed to look at menthol and cessation, but the effects of menthol on quitting were larger in more recent studies, in younger smokers and largely restricted to African-American and Latino smokers.

Other members of the research team are Monica Webb Hooper, Ph.D., Department of Psychology and Biobehavioral Oncology, University of Miami; Mark J. Pletcher, M.D., M.P.H., Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California at San Francisco; and Kolawole S. Okuyemi, M.D., M.P.H., Program in Health Disparities Research, University of Minnesota Medical School.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jonathan Foulds, Monica Webb Hooper, Mark J. Pletcher, and Kolawole S. Okuyemi. Do Smokers of Menthol Cigarettes Find It Harder to Quit Smoking?Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 2010; 12 (suppl 2) DOI: 10.1093/ntr/ntq166