Police-Related Stress and Carotid Intima-Media Thickness Among African American Women

Abstract

Objective: Anti-Black police violence and harassment have been identified as public health issues. However, studies have primarily focused on direct and/or vicarious police encounters. A dearth of studies has also examined vigilance related to future police encounters, and to our knowledge, no studies have examined all three kinds of police-related stress among African American women.

Methods: We employed a latent class analysis (LCA) approach to identify classes of African American women (N=422), aged 30-46, based on the patterning of various forms of self-reported police-related stress: direct, vicarious, police-related vigilance for self, and police-related vigilance for children. We then examined associations between latent class membership and carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), a marker of cardiovascular risk.

Results: We identified three latent classes of police-related stress: High Child Vigilance-High Personal Exposure, No Child Vigilance-High Personal Exposure, and Moderate Child Vigilance-Low Self Vigilance-Low Personal Exposure class. Findings from the fully adjusted model reveal that the No Child Vigilance-High Personal Exposure class had lower common carotid artery (CCA) IMT than the High Child Vigilance-High Personal Exposure and Moderate Child Vigilance-Low Self Vigilance-Low Personal Exposure classes.

Conclusions: Vigilance for children's future police encounters may be associated with increased cardiovascular risk in African American women. Agency, system, and policy-level solutions may be needed to reduce anti-Black police violence and improve the cardiovascular health of this high-risk population.

Keywords: African American women; Atherosclerosis; Cardiovascular Disease; Police-related Stress; Social Determinants of Health; Vigilance.