Weathering hypothesis

The weathering hypothesis was first proposed by Arline Geronimus in 1992. It holds that African American women's health deteriorates in early adulthood as a result of their cumulative exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage. Subsequent studies by her and others have found support for the hypothesis. In recent years, the hypothesis has been examined with regard to phenomena such as allostatic load, epigenetics, and telomere shortening.

Origin

While working part-time at a school for pregnant teenagers in Trenton, New Jersey, Geronimus first noticed that the teens who came to the school tended to have far more health problems than her classmates at Princeton University. She thus began to wonder whether the health conditions of the teens at that clinic may have been caused by their environment. While in graduate school, she proposed the "weathering hypothesis". She chose the term weathering as a metaphor for the effects she perceived that exposure to stress was having on the health of marginalized people.

See also

• Minority stress
• Race and health in the United States#African Americans
• Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
• Seasoning (slavery)
• Slave health on plantations in the United States
• Slavery hypertension hypothesis
• Transgenerational trauma