Darrell L. Hudson

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Washington University in St. Louis

This article introduces a special section of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research devoted to the development and dissemination of antiracist research. Antiracist research is defined as systematic theorizing, inquiry, intervention development, and program implementation that exposes, rejects, dismantles, and/or remedies racism, co...

Meaningful community engagement is critical to achieving the lofty goal of health equity. Nonetheless, implementing the principles of community engagement is not easy. Attempting to implement best practices for collaborating on transdisciplinary teams and working with community partners can be challenging, particularly in locales that have a long h...

Evidence from previous research indicates that while socioeconomic status (SES) narrows Black-White health inequities, these inequities do not completely disappear, and in some cases, worsen. Why do Black-White health inequities persist, even when controlling for SES? It is critical to examine how perceptions of unfair treatment, especially those t...

•Wealth attenuated racial differences in self-rated health during young adulthood.•Wealth had consistent incremental effect on health among White & Hispanic Americans.•For Black Americans, wealth was protective of health in the highest wealth quartile.•Individual wealth, not parental wealth was associated with health among Hispanics.

Purpose of Review We conducted a scoping review to evaluate the degree to which literature published within the past 5 years concerning mental health among Black emerging adult men in the USA engaged with intersectionality. Methods Using scoping review methods, we applied the following a-priori eligibility criteria: (i) sample included Black/Afric...

Depression is a leading cause of disability, affecting approximately 300 million people globally [...].

Research indicates that income is significantly associated with allostatic load (AL) and that this association may differ between White and Black Americans. Most existing income-AL link work focuses on women and less is known about this association among men. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we examined...

Introduction: We examined baseline differences in depression and antidepressant use among cognitively normal older adults in five ethnoracial groups and assessed whether depression predicted a faster progression to incident cognitive impairment across groups. Methods: Data from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (n = 8168) were used to...

Most local communities lack the capacity to conduct behavioral health needs assessments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a mixed-methods approach to estimate the behavioral health needs in St. Louis, MO. Data were drawn from multiple sources including local and state government prevalence estimates, medical records, and key informant inter...

Breast cancer is the most commonly experienced cancer among women. Its high rates of incidence and survival mean that a number of women will live it for periods of their lifetimes. Group differences in breast cancer incidence and mortality occur by race and ethnicity. For example, while white women are slightly more likely to be diagnosed with brea...

Background: Recent studies have shown that parental educational attainment is associated with a larger superior temporal cortical surface area associated with higher reading ability in children. Simultaneously, the marginalization-related diminished returns (MDRs) framework suggests that, due to structural racism and social stratification, returns...

Financial resources are known to affect health outcomes. Many types of social policies and programs, including social assistance and social insurance, have been implemented around the world to increase financial resources. We refer to these as cash transfers. In this article, we discuss theory and evidence on whether, how, for whom, and to what ext...

Health equity means that everyone, regardless of their abilities, economic status, or race/ethnicity, has the opportunity to reach their optimal level of health. However, the inequitable distribution of resources, power, and privilege in the United States means that historically marginalized communities bear a disproportionate burden of poor health...

Background Previous research suggests that women and African Americans are potentially at greater risk for developing Alzheimer disease (AD). Genetic, social, environmental, and cardiovascular factors may increase the risk of AD. (1) Assess neuroimaging biomarkers of amyloid (A), tau (T), and neurodegeneration (N) for potential sex and racial diffe...

Background Previous research suggests that African Americans are potentially at greater risk for developing Alzheimer disease (AD). Genetic, social, environmental, and cardiovascular factors may increase the risk of AD. The objectives of this project are as follows: (1) Assess neuroimaging biomarkers of amyloid (A), tau (T), and neurodegeneration (...

Due to widespread, deeply entrenched racial residential segregation, public spaces in the United States are often overwhelmingly white. Middle-class Black Americans frequently work, live and recreate in predominantly white settings. Based on focus groups with Black men in St. Louis, we found that middle-class Black men often (1) survive the white s...

Objectives African Americans are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia than non‐Hispanic whites. In addition to biological considerations (eg, genetic influences and comorbid disorders), social and environmental factors may increase the risk of AD dementia. This paper (1) assesses neuroimaging biomarkers of amyloid (A), t...

Financial resources are known to affect health outcomes. Many types of social policies and programs, including social assistance and social insurance, have been implemented around the world to increase financial resources. As an overall term, we refer to these as cash transfers. In this article, we discuss whether, how, for whom, and to what extent...

Racial wealth inequity between Whites and people of color, particularly Black and Latino Americans, is one of the most pressing social and economic issues in the United States, historically and at present. The magnitude of the racial wealth gap is immense and deeply entrenched, and the scale of racial inequities in wealth has changed very little in...

Background and Objectives Among the multiple factors posited to drive the health inequities that black men experience, the fundamental role of stress in the production of poor health is a key component. Allostatic load (AL) is considered to be a byproduct of stressors related to cumulative disadvantage. Exposure to chronic stress is associated with...

There are many unwritten rules in the academy, and much of the advice that doctoral students receive about the academic job search is from their mentors. For many doctoral students, navigating the academic job market can be bewildering. In this article, an associate professor of public health with experience navigating the job market as well as exp...

There is a growing literature that has documented diminishing health returns on upward social mobility among Black Americans. Due to historical policies and practices, upward social mobility is often an arduous, isolating process for Black Americans, especially as they navigate predominately white educational and workplace settings. This paper adva...

Citizenship facilitates home ownership, which promotes access to additional resources and structures social context, factors that improve the health of individuals and communities. The objective of this study was to examine whether citizenship moderated the association between homeownership and self-rated health. We used multivariate logistic regre...

Civic education translates research evidence about topics of social importance for broad public audiences, with increased understanding and meaningful action of the desired outcomes. For the Sake of All is an example of civic education on the social determinants of health and health disparities situated in the local context of St. Louis, Missouri....

ImportanceThere are more than 500 articles in the 2014 race-based healthcare disparities literature across a broad array of diseases and outcomes. However, unlike many other forms of research (e.g., clinical trials and systematic reviews), there are no required reporting guidelines when submitting results of disparities studies to journals. Objecti...

Depression is one of the most common, costly, and debilitating psychiatric disorders in the United States. One of the most persistent mental health disparities is the underutilization of treatment services among African American men with depression. Little is known about appropriateness or acceptability of depression care among African American men...

Depression is one of the most common, costly, and debilitating psychiatric disorders in the US. There are also strong associations between depression and physical health outcomes, particularly chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus. Yet, mental health services are underutilized throughout the US. Recent policy changes have encouraged depression...

The key to living a longer, healthier life lies in one’s ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle and make health behavior changes. Public health professionals face the difficult task of developing effective health communication to encourage healthy lifestyles for an American public distracted by competing demands, such as work obligations and famil...

Recent events in Ferguson underscore the need to better understand the unique challenges, stressors, and coping mechanisms of African American men. To this end, a focus group study was conducted in Saint Louis, a few miles from Ferguson. Although numerous stress-related themes were discussed, racial discrimination and structural racism emerged as p...

We examined the prevalence of mental disorders in a primary care setting affiliated with a large academic medical center. We also examined whether there were racial differences in mental health disorders. Patients were seeking medical care in an outpatient medical clinic; mental health data were available for them via medical records (n=767). Overa...

Although White women are more likely to develop breast cancer, Black women are more likely to die from the disease. A number of social factors have been implicated as social determinants of this disparity in breast cancer mortality, including race/ethnicity, social class, gender, and neighborhood. This chapter illustrates how knowledge of the deter...

Few studies have investigated links between child abuse and neglect and diabetes mellitus in nationally representative samples, and none have explored the role of obesity in the relationship. We sought to determine whether child abuse and neglect were associated with diabetes and if so, whether obesity mediated this relationship in a population-rep...

Evidence from previous studies indicates that racial discrimination is significantly associated with depression and that African Americans with higher levels of socioeconomic status (SES) report greater exposure to racial discrimination compared to those with lower SES levels. Coping strategies could alter the relationship between racial discrimina...

Background: African Americans bear disproportionate burdens of disease, disability, and death in St. Louis, Missouri. Health disparities are closely linked to social determinants of health (SDH) like education and income, but public understanding of these relationships remains limited. For the Sake of All is an ongoing community education project d...

It is unknown whether there are racial differences in the heritability of major depressive disorder (MDD) because most psychiatric genetic studies have been conducted in samples comprised largely of white non-Hispanics. To examine potential differences between African-American (AA) and European-American (EA) young adult women in (1) Diagnostic and...

Rates of alcohol use disorders (AUD) are generally low among women who have ever had children (mothers) compared to women who have never had children (nonmothers), presenting a motherhood advantage. It is unclear if this advantage accrues to “Black” and “White” women alike. Using National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NE...

Studies have consistently indicated that blacks report lower rates of depression than whites. This study examined the association between religion and depression and whether religion explained lower rates of depression among blacks compared to whites. Data were drawn from the National Survey of American Life, a multi-ethnic sample of African Americ...

Purpose: Being married is associated with lower rates of depression, but less is known about the association between marital status and anxiety. Although African Americans, Caribbean Blacks, and Whites have different marriage patterns in the United States, few studies have examined whether the relationship between marital status and anxiety varies...

Greater levels of socioeconomic position (SEP) are generally associated with better health. However results from previous studies vary across race/ethnicity and health outcomes. Further, the majority of previous studies do not account for the effects of life course SEP on health nor the effects of racial discrimination, which could moderate the eff...

Crucial advances have been made in our knowledge of the social determinants of health and health behaviors. Existing research on health disparities, however, generally fails to address a known paradox in the literature: While blacks have higher risk of medical morbidity relative to non-Hispanic whites, blacks have lower rates of common stress-relat...

Background: It is unknown to what extent the gap between need and care for depression among patients with diabetes differs across racial/ethnic groups. We compared, by race/ethnicity, the likelihood of clinical recognition of depression (diagnosis or treatment) of patients who reported depressive symptoms in a well-characterized community-based po...

Findings from community psychiatric epidemiologic studies have consistently indicated that blacks report lower rates of depression than whites. This paper considers whether these differences could, in part, be explained by subjective religiosity and church attendance. Data for this study were drawn from the National Survey of American Life, which i...

BACKGROUND: conventional wisdom suggests that increased socioeconomic resources should be related to better health. Considering the body of evidence demonstrating the significant association between racial discrimination and depression, we examined whether exposure to racial discrimination could attenuate the positive effects of increased levels of...

While an estimated 8% of the US-black population is foreign-born, with Caribbean immigrants as the largest subgroup, heterogeneity within the black population is often ignored. Additionally, we know very little about the effects of racial discrimination on risk of depression among Caribbean Blacks, but racial discrimination has been identified as a...

Purpose: This study examines the influence of discrimination and mastery on depressive symptoms for African American men at young (18-34), middle (35-54), and late (55+) adulthood. Method: Analyses are based on responses from 1,271 African American men from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL). Results: Discrimination was significantly...

Job strain has been associated with hypertension among younger workers; however, whether this relationship persists among older workers, particularly older racial/ethnic minorities, is unresolved. This study evaluated whether job strain and workplace discrimination are associated with hypertension and poor blood pressure control among older workers...

Findings from previous studies have not revealed significant, inverse relationships between socioeconomic position (SEP) and depression among African Americans. This study examined the relationship between multiple indicators of SEP and Major Depressive Episode (MDE) among African Americans. Data were drawn from the National Survey of American Life...

The educational, employment, and financial status of African Americans differs from that of other US race/ethnic groups, particularly White Americans. For example, in July 2006, it was estimated that 23.8 million Americans aged between 18 and 64 years, or 12.6% of the total US population, were African American. Of the African American noninstitutio...

We use a life course framework to analyze lifetime patterns of mortality among black Americans. Using this framework directs attention to specific questions regarding the potential causes of racial group differentials in mortality, and we hope moves the field toward more comprehensive and testable explanations. The work on aging, the life course, a...

Background: Socioeconomic status (SES) is patterned by race in the US, with Blacks over-represented in low SES relative to Whites. Prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), as with most physical health conditions, is inversely patterned by SES. The stress associated with social disadvantage is hypothesized to mediate the SES-MDD relationship....

Prevalence of depression is associated inversely with some indicators of socioeconomic position, and the stress of social disadvantage is hypothesized to mediate this relation. Relative to whites, blacks have a higher burden of most physical health conditions but, unexpectedly, a lower burden of depression. This study evaluated an etiologic model t...

Background: Exposure to occupational stress has been associated with hypertension. However, it is unknown whether this relationship persists among older workers, particularly racial/ethnic minorities. Objective: To examine the relationship between occupational stressors and hypertension status among working adults aged ≥ 50 years and to assess di...

The relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and depression among African Americans was explored in this dissertation. Several SEP indicators, specifically household income, education, parental education, net worth, and home value, were used to predict odds of depression among African Americans. This dissertation also considered how experi...

Background: C-reactive protein (CRP) is a marker of systemic inflammation and a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Psychosocial stressors and circumstances associated with chronic stress, such as low socioeconomic position (SEP), have been associated with elevated CRP. It is unclear what mediates these relationships. Objective: To ev...

While youth violence has been recognized as a serious global health problem, there is a paucity of research about youth violence in South Africa. The goal of this study was to investigate influences of youth violence and to explore the effects of violence exposure among high school students in township schools proximal to Durban, South Africa. Thre...

Ethnic differences in both physiological response to and health consequences of tobacco smoking-some of which have been attributed to ethnic preferences for menthol cigarettes-have been described in the literature. We compared acute physiological responses to smoking in African-American and European-American adolescent menthol cigarette smokers see...