An examination of role strain, womanist identity, and John Henryism on the health and cardiovascular risk of African American women

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death of all women in the United States. Moreover, CVD morbidity and mortality rates are higher for African American women than for women of any other racial/ethnic group. While biological and psychosocial factors have been found to impact the development and perpetuation of CVD, there is currently a lack of research that has addressed the psychosocial factors of CVD for African American women. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the impact of psychosocial factors of multiple role strain, womanist identity, and John Henryism active coping on the general health and cardiovascular risk of African American women, based can demographic characteristics. The research questions were as follows: (1) Is there an interaction between SES and John Henryism on general health and on CVD risk in the presence of role strain, womanist identity, and demographic variables? (2) When considering role strain, womanist identity, John Henryism and demographic variables as a set, which have a unique relationship to African American women's general health and CVD risk? Data were collected from a community sample of 196 African American female participants (ages 20-65 years-old). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that SES had significant effects (beta=.251; p<.05) when considering all the independent variables on general health. No significant effects were found when considering all the independent variables on cardiovascular risk. One of the implications of this study is that counseling with African American women with low SES could assist them in managing psychosocial stressors and mitigate the negative impact of this stress on their health. This finding also supports the notion that women of low SES need to be included in research studies in order to examine their unique health behaviors and psychological experiences.