Life
White Canadians no healthier than Black Canadians
(Reuters Health) – Black Canadians are at least as healthy as white Canadians, hints a study that is a stark contrast to U.S. statistics.
From health surveys, researchers found that black people born in Canada had lower rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer than their white compatriots.
By contrast, high blood pressure and diabetes were more common among African Americans than white Americans in the U.S.
One possible explanation is that African Americans have a long history as second-class citizens, said Thomas A. LaVeist, who directs the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions in Baltimore.
“That is what I think is fueling the disparity we see in the U.S.,” LaVeist, whose findings appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine, told Reuters Health.
Canada, on the other hand, had only a brief encounter with slavery and many African Canadians are recent immigrants.
“We know that recent immigrants tend to be healthier than the native populations in a country,” LaVeist said.
