Racism has been shown to have a strong effect on health disparities and has been shown to impact the health of individuals. Black infant mortality...

Studies conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Health Policy Institute suggest that stress caused by racism plays a role in black infant mortality. Currently, the rate of black infant mortality is twice that of white infant mortality. Studies in the American Journal of Public Health and the New England Journal of Medicine suggest that American-born black women of all socio-economic backgrounds are more likely than white, immigrant, Hispanic, and other women to have pre-term or low-weight babies. Researchers believe that beyond other factors, stress plays a significant role in this disparity.

Following the social-ecological model, interventions have to occur at the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels to reduce black infant mortality. For example, interventions at the individual level have to work to reduce the stress that black women who are pregnant feel, and, at the relationship level, their partners and families must work to support them. In addition, black women report feeling stressed that their communities are sometimes unsafe and do not have sufficient nutritious food choices, and they also may not have resources such as prenatal counseling or stress reduction courses in their communities. Black women also report stress from racism in schools and work, and this type of racism has to be combated on a societal level. Stress caused by insufficient resources at all these levels can affect black women's pregnancies, and interventions to reduce stressors and improve the prenatal health of black women must occur on all these levels.