Sabrenda Braceful
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Natalie Colabianchi
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Applied Exercise Science / Kinesiology
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Authors: Sabrenda Braceful, Ian Lang, Cathy Antonakos, Stephanie Miller, Natalie Colabianchi
Abstract
School segregation and educational quality are key social factors of an individual’s health and health inequities. Thus it is important to analyze the long-term effects of experiencing segregated schools to see how that may impact an individual’s health. Our purpose is to examine black and white school term length and stroke frequency in individuals who attended K-12 education in the state of Tennessee from 1900 – 1954 to analyze how educational quality may impact stroke. Our methods include extracting school term length data from federal education records and filling in missing data with predicted values. The REGARDS data set (REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke Study) tracks participants of all ages (including those who attended school before 1954) nationwide since the year 2003 for their reasons of stroke. We then extracted from the REGARDS data set whether or not a person had a stroke and attended K-12 education in the state of Tennessee from 1900 – 1954 (n = 269). Looking at the state of Tennessee from 1900 – 1954, we found that black participants had an average term length of 167.7 days and white participants had a longer average term length of 169.3 days (p < 0.001). Race was not associated with stroke (p = 0.59). Average term length significantly predicted the risk of incident stroke (p = 0.005). This potentially shows the enduring effects of structural racism and how lower educational quality (such as having fewer days of school) can disproportionately affect black people, which ultimately impacts how they live and the state of their health in the long run.
