Illness Narratives of African Americans Living With Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Interactionist Analysis.
How African American men and women respond to and manage living with coronary heart disease (CHD) is not well understood despite the well-documented disproportionate burden of CHD and its complications among African Americans in the United States. Through a critical interactionist perspective, we explore illness experiences of African Americans living with CHD and describe a broad range of micro-, meso-, and macro-contextual factors that influence their illness experiences. For participants in this study, CHD has become a "Black disease" wherein certain bodies have become historically and racially marked; a conceptualization maintained and passed on by African Americans themselves. Such findings highlight that CHD is more than a "lifestyle disease" where high-risk behaviors and lack of healthy choices are ultimate culprits. Rather, CHD is perceived by African Americans who have it as yet another product of ongoing racial and socio-structural dynamics through which their health burdens are created, sustained, and reproduced.
1 University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
Leslie
L
Dubbin
1 University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
Monica
M
McLemore
1 University of California, San Francisco, California, USA.
Janet K
JK
Shim
D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D000368:Aged; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States
African Americans; coronary heart disease; critical interactionism; health disparities; qualitative Western United States; racial inequalities