Childhood Socioeconomic Status and Cardiometabolic Health: A Test of the John Henryism Hypothesis in African American Older Adults

Abstract

Background John Henryism (JH) is a form of active high-effort coping. Low socioeconomic status (SES) African Americans adopting JH to deal with structural racism and other chronic stressors might be more likely to display cardiovascular disease risk factors. Previous tests of this hypothesis have mostly focused on the moderating role of current SES and hypertension as the outcome variable. Further, most of the previous work has been conducted among young and middle-aged adults. The present study aimed at extending work on the JH hypothesis by testing the combined effect of JH and childhood SES on metabolic syndrome and systemic inflammation among African American elders. Methods One-hundred and seventy urban African American older adults (Mage = 67.64 years, 75.9% female) were recruited. Participants completed questionnaires assessing JH, childhood SES, and other variables used as covariates (i.e., demographic information, chronic conditions, medication use, and health behaviors). Blood pressure, waist circumference, and blood were also collected. Triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C, and C-Reactive Protein levels were measured from the blood samples. Results JH was positively associated with MetS symptoms among participants reporting low childhood SES levels, but not among those reporting high childhood SES levels. The same pattern did not emerge when we considered current SES. Similar patterns of results did not emerge as far as systemic inflammation was concerned. Conclusions Our findings highlight the importance of considering the joint impact of objective conditions early in life and individual psychological proclivities in explaining increased risk for cardiovascular disease risk in this population.

The mediating role of systemic inflammation and moderating role of racialization in disparities in incident dementia

“…Although participants racialized as non-Hispanic Black had the highest levels of systemic inflammation, elevated CRP protein was not associated with incident dementia. An explanation for this finding may be that adults racialized as non-Hispanic Black exhibit high systemic inflammation levels as a result of high-effort coping against the stress of racism but this translated only superficially into changes in their cognitive test scores, a syndrome known in the literature as John Henryism 105 – 107 . Also, the majority of incident dementia cases occurred in participants racialized as non-Hispanic white ( n = 521 or 65.5%), and to a lesser extent in participants racialized as non-Hispanic Black ( n = 171 or 21%) and Hispanic ( n = 103, 13%), the lower number of events in minoritized participants suggest that these statistical power issues may be a limitation.…”