References 559analyses. In this way, health behaviors devoid of the impact
of culture can be examined appropriately.
CONCLUSION
Science is currently in the process of understanding the
unique patterns in health that economic status, culture/
ethnicity/race, and gender form. Considerable work needs to
be done to understand the biobehavioral mechanisms that in-
teract in synergistic ways to affect health, particularly in
ethnic minorities. Further research, speci“cally longitudinal
research, is needed to depict the complexities of health
among ethnic minorities.
While the president•s initiative to eliminate health dispar-
ities will be dif“cult to attain, it is a necessary and critical
goal given the unequal burden of disease and access to health
care. The challenges are not only in the reduction of inci-
dence of disease but also in the conceptual, methodological,
and epistemological basis of the study of health and disease.
Researchers with a health psychology perspective are essen-
tial in understanding the complicated, sometimes chaotic
(meant as describing complex systems) ways that health and
disease manifest in minority populations and across gender
and socioeconomic status.
Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome
Research Institute (NHGRI) of the NIH, announced in June
2000 that they had developed a •working draftŽ of the human
genome. This historic event places science on the doorstep of
limitless possibilities in the struggle to understand diseases
and how to treat them. Knowing the sequence of the genome
is only the beginning. Equally important will be our knowl-
edge of how the environment in”uences health, disease, and
health behaviors. Previous research on the signi“cant impact
that sociodemographic factors play in contributing to disease
processes is perhaps our best indicator that science must
avoid the reductionistic view, which assumes that knowing
and manipulating the genome will cure all our ills. We must
understand how genes and environmental in”uences work in
concert to produce positive and negative health conse-
quences. Much of what produces differences in health and
disease in ethnic minorities are behaviors that are interwoven
in the fabric of being, which we call culture. The challenge is
to ascertain the underlying effect of genes in complex envi-
ronments on health and learn how to create programs and in-
terventions that take account for both. We may also “nd that
polymorphisms that occur in genotypes found to be responsi-
ble for damaging or protective factors related to disease and
health are created, modi“ed, or triggered by cultural and
context factors.
The introduction to the 1991 special issue on •Gender,
Stress, and HealthŽ in Health Psychology(Vol. 10, No. 2,
p. 84) written by Baum and Greenberg concludes: •Research
on health and behavior should consider men and women„
not because it is discriminatory not to do so„but because it
is good science. The study of women and men, of young
and old, of African Americans and Caucasians, Asians,
Hispanics, and Native Americans will all help to reveal psy-
chosocial and biological mechanisms that are critical to un-
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