The term was coined in 1992 by researcher Arlene Geronimus, now professor of public health at the University of Michigan. Starting with the observation that black women’s health in the USA was generally worse than that of white women, Geronimus used ‘weathering’ to describe the cumulative effects on people’s health of repeated or lifelong exposure to socioeconomic adversity, political marginalisation, racism and perpetual discrimination.
While it has long been known that in the UK, as in the ethnically diverse populations of many other countries, the general health and average life expectancy of minority ethnic groups is lower than that of the dominant (white) population, this health divide was thrown into sharper relief by the Covid-19 pandemic. Both infection rates and death rates were typically higher for many ethnic minority groups, and their take-up of vaccines has also been lower.
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