On the percent of excess risk explained

摘要

Bleich et al~1 provide a novel examination of black—white disparities in women's health by comparing only women who live in two Baltimore census tracts that are integrated and low income, thereby controlling for social context and contemporaneous income. Many national and regional datasets include black and white women who tend to live in very different neighbourhoods due to systematic residential segregation, and unless the neighbourhood environment is controlled with fixed effects,~(2 3) disparities may be overestimated. The authors report that the obesity disparity is no longer statistically significant within the integrated low-income communities (OR 1.25, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.75) in contrast to that found in a national sample (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.71 to 2.32), suggesting an important role of social context in generating racial disparities.