Future research needs to explore the extent to which elevated health risks are located at multiple intersections of stigmatization and discrimination. Understanding how experiences of racial discrimination relate to internalized racism and combine to affect health is also important. Self-reported experiences of discrimination must also be situated within the context of the total stress burden of respondents’ lives with the recognition that racism (interpersonal and institutional) is only one source of stress. That is, understanding the potential contribution of stressful life experiences to racial disparities in health requires the assessment of perceived discrimination and a systematic effort to assess all of the other social, psychological and environmental (physical and chemical) stressors that respondents face. Research is also needed to identify the coping and adaptive resources that respondents use to respond to racism. One recent study using longitudinal data from the National Study of Black Americans, found that religious involvement was a health enhancing resource in the face of racial discrimination.90 Frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of guidance provided by religion in daily life buffered the negative
