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For Black American youth and their families, the racial terror that claimed the life of George Floyd in May 2020 is nothing new, as stories of people who look just like them have been part and parcel of their lived experience in the United States. Beyond state-sanctioned murder, Black youth were also witnessing the disproportionate transmission, treatment, and travesty plaguing their community with COVID-19 – all predictable outcomes given the inequitable systems supporting the American pipeline from cradle to grave. Why, then, were so many White Americans just coming into awareness of this deadly disease of individual and systemic racism that has ravaged Black American communities for centuries? In this work, we seek to explain in what ways racism is tantamount to a social virus and how its permeation is endemic to the American body, rather than an emerging threat, like a pandemic. We will also address how better conceptualizing racism as a virus allows for more accurate, precise, and feasible treatments for transmitters and targets of racism with respect to prevention (e.g., inoculation) and intervention (e.g., healing and vaccination). Finally, we will describe clinical therapeutic trials that will help to decipher whether our treatment of this social disease is effective, including family-level interventions and systemic shifts in prevention through clinical training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To determine whether Black women in Michigan communities outside of Flint were more likely than women in other racial and ethnic groups to report negative emotional reactions to the Flint Water Crisis, an ongoing public health disaster that has been widely attributed to anti-Black structural racism., Methods: Data were from a 2020 survey of Michigan women aged 18-45 in communities outside of Flint (N=888). We used logistic regression models to examine racial and ethnic differences in the odds of negative emotional reactions to the Flint Water Crisis., Results: Compared with Black women, White women had lower odds of feeling scared (odds ratio [OR]=0.58; 95% CI, 0.40-0.84), hopeless (OR=0.53; 95% CI, 0.38-0.74), tired (OR=0.45; 95% CI, 0.32-0.64), and numb (OR=0.52; 95% CI, 0.35-0.75) when thinking about the water crisis. There were no differences between Black and Hispanic women, whereas women of other races or ethnicities had lower odds than Black women of feeling numb (OR=0.32; 95% CI, 0.14-0.72)., Conclusions: The Flint Water Crisis was a racialized stressor, with potential implications for mental health inequities among Michigan women who were not directly affected by the crisis., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest: No conflicts of interest reported by authors.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between ACEs and inflammatory profiles (i.e., pro- and anti-) in early childhood and to examine whether patterns differ for racial/ethnic subgroups., Study Design: Using longitudinal data from the Multidimensional Assessment of Preschoolers Study (MAPS) (N = 122), we examined the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) beginning at birth, C -reactive protein (CRP), and both pro-inflammatory (i.e., IL-1 β, IL-6, TNF, and CRP) and anti-inflammatory (i.e. IL-4 and IL-10) biomarkers during early school age (ages 6-8 years)., Results: No children in the sample were reported to have experienced 0 ACES, 7% had 1 ACE, 51% had 2-3 ACEs, and 42% had 4 or more ACEs accumulated by the early school-age wave (ESA). There were no significant associations between cumulative ACEs and inflammatory markers. However, parental substance abuse, a specific ACE, was positively correlated with a pro-inflammatory profile at early school age (r = 0.18, p<.05). Specifically, substance abuse as an ACE was associated with higher levels of pro-inflammatory markers such as IL-1 β and IL-6. Additionally, Hispanics with ACEs had higher levels of CRP than Black and white individuals., Conclusions: Children with histories of ACEs, especially those with parental substance abuse, may have higher levels of inflammation. Better understanding the role of inflammation in the development of chronic diseases for individuals with ACEs may allow earlier identification and prevention of disease during childhood for those at the highest risk., Competing Interests: None., (© 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc.)