ACF Equity Study Group: Everyday Discrimination Scale

The work of Dr. David R. Williams, Florence and Laura Norman, Professor of Public Health, Professor of African and African American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University, has focused primarily on discrimination in our public health systems and on how systematic racism affects one’s health. For example, if we look at life expectancy at age 25, there’s a five-year gap between Black people and white people. Dr. Williams was able to demonstrate how much the everyday microaggressions that Black people face adds up to a shorter life span and worse overall health than their White counterparts, for which he developed a very useful tool in the Everyday Day Discrimination Scale, the second of three scales he developed to measure racism.

For this month’s ACF Study Group, we will take a look at The Everyday Discrimination Scale and its usefulness in understanding how the stress of racism affects the human body in the long term.

Dr. Williams’ Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_r_williams_how_racism_makes_us_sick/transcript

60 Minutes feature on Dr. Williams: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-disease-black-americans-covid-19-2021-04-18/

Register for the study group here.