Students of color show health advantages when they attend schools that emphasize the value of diversity

Abstract

As the United States becomes more diverse, the ways in which mainstream institutions recognize and address race and ethnicity will be increasingly important. Here, we show that one novel and salient characteristic of an institutional environment, that is, whether a school emphasizes the value of racial and ethnic diversity, predicts better cardiometabolic health among adolescents of color. Using a diverse sample of adolescents who attend more than 100 different schools in predominantly urban locations, we find that when schools emphasize the value of diversity (operationalized as mentioning diversity in their mission statements), students of color, but not white students, have lower values on a composite of five biomarkers of inflammation, have less insulin resistance and compensatory β-cell activity, and have fewer metabolic syndrome signs and score lower on a continuous metabolic syndrome composite. These results suggest that institutions that emphasize diversity may play an unacknowledged role in protecting the health of people of color and, thus, may be a site for future interventions to reduce health disparities.

The moderating effect of COVID-19 stress on school racial climate and parent and child mental well-being

“…Racial equity promotion in K-12 schools is necessary and important given the systematic inequities and disparities present in the education system ( Hussar et al, 2020 , Warren, 2014 ), and in society at large ( Carter et al, 2017 , Ladson-Billings, 2006 , Webb Hooper et al, 2020 . Research shows that schools that promote more equitable practices, emphasize the value of diversity, and support culturally-relevant, school-wide mental health efforts improve the health and well-being of the student body and improve family-school partnerships ( Childs et al, 2021 , Barker et al, 2021 , Levine et al, 2019 ). Beyond this, study findings point to the importance of equitable systems for students and families across racial communities in light of the negative impacts of the pandemic.…”

A Diversity Ideology Intervention: Multiculturalism Reduces the Racial Achievement Gap

“…Alternatively, it is possible that we did not capture the mechanisms through which the intervention influenced students’ achievement. For example, multiculturalism could have improved grades by reducing URM students’ stress during the college transition (Levine et al, 2019; Levy et al, 2016).…”

School Cultural Socialization and Academic Performance: Examining Ethnic‐Racial Identity Development as a Mediator Among African American Adolescents

“…The fact that our findings remained significant after controlling for self‐reported experiences of discrimination suggests that all youth, even those who may be less attuned to ethnic‐racial biases and prejudices, benefitted from school cultural socialization practices. In addition, the school racial climate literature has implicitly assumed that reducing discrimination experiences induces positive outcomes among youth of color (Levine, Markus, Austin, Chen, & Miller, 2019). Because our study revealed that school‐based cultural socialization predicted positive ethnic‐racial identities and better academic grades over and above perceived discrimination, schools’ efforts that promote racial diversity should be considered as strength‐based approaches for improving African American youth’s development.…”