Uchechi Mitchell: Detecting if racial inequities make people age faster

Uchechi Mitchell, associate professor of community health sciences, named 2024-25 Rising Star in Social Sciences. (Photo: Martin Hernandez/UIC)

What does effective health education look like in communities that don't have public spaces to exercise or healthy food to eat?

Uchechi Mitchellwas working as a community health corps member with the National Health Service Corps when she first asked that question. She was teaching older Black adults with diabetes about healthy eating and exercise when she realized it wasn't a lack of information keeping them from reaching their health goals; it was a lack of easily accessible and high-quality spaces for engaging in these healthy behaviors.

Because she wanted to learn more about why Black communities lacked these spaces and what could be done about it, after her year of service she changed her own goal, from a career in pediatrics to one in public health.

Today, her research at UIC focuses on health equity and aging, particularly racial and ethnic health disparities that are influenced by stressors like discrimination and financial strain. Using data from a Health and Retirement Study, Mitchell and her team found acts of discrimination adversely affected cognitive functioning and that middle-aged Black adults experience faster declines in cognition compared to white adults. This finding is significant given research showing that Black adults have dementia rates more than twice the rates of white adults.

"I'm really trying to think through these pathways and processes that lead to health inequities as a means of trying to identify points of intervention," Mitchell said.

In a study called "Hope, Purpose and Religiosity," Mitchell and her colleagues examined whether these three factors could inform interventions to combat symptoms of depression among Black adults. What they found was that being hopeful and maintaining a strong sense of purpose in life protected against depressive symptoms for Black adults in mid-life and old age. They concluded that tailored interventions to foster hope and purpose in life may improve mental health among older Black people.

Mitchell has more than 30 published works, including in the Journals of Gerontology, Health Education & Behavior and Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

Next, she wants to answer questions about how racial and ethnic minorities confront disparities in public health.

"We're trying to understand what they are doing as a group, as a people, as a community, to weather the storms that they face and thrive in ways that maybe you may not expect," Mitchell said. "There's a shift in the political climate that could lead to the censoring of health inequity research. It might be temporary, but if we stop doing the work, then these health inequities will be permanent."