Exploring a Career in Biostatistics While Researching the Association of Discrimination and Depression

Undergraduate #256
Discipline: Mathematics and Statistics
Subcategory: Physiology and Health

Deja Young - North Carolina Central University
Co-Author(s): Celine Bien-Aime, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

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The Biostatistics and Epidemiology Summer Training (BEST) Diversity Program is offered by the School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City. The program selects undergraduates with potential interest in Biostatistics. This program allows participants to take two courses: Introduction to Biostatistics and Statistical Computing. In addition to the two courses, a requirement of the program is a research project focused on the association between discrimination and depression, and the influence of certain factors, such as race, gender, and income. The research project relied on published literature in the field, reviewing public health databases to obtain and analyze data relevant to our research focus. We hypothesized that there would be a negative association between depression and discrimination and that Blacks would have lower rates of depression and higher rates of discrimination when compared to Whites. The findings contradicted our hypotheses in which we found a positive association between depression and discrimination. The results showed there is a higher rate of discrimination against Blacks than Whites. They further showed that although Whites have a higher lifetime prevalence of depression than Blacks, Blacks have more severe and chronic events of depression. We proposed that in the future, longitudinal studies be conducted in order to determine the cause and effect relationship between discrimination and depression.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Faculty Advisor: Alade Tokuta, Dana March,