Future research needs to sensitively and thoroughly categorize the stressors in the social environments within which vulnerable populations live and work. These residential and occupational environments can be distinctive in the types and quantity of stressors to which individuals are exposed. Efforts are needed to catalogue and quantify exposures linked to the physical, chemical and built environment and assess how they combine with psychosocial stressors (including discrimination) and accumulate over the life course. Special attention should be given to the potential of differential effects of chemical exposures. Prior research indicates for example, that smoking has more negative effects on some vulnerable minority populations than on whites. Research also needs to explore biological profile differences across groups with the recognition that not all biological profile differences are driven by underlying genetics, but some could reflect complex interactions between exposure to disadvantaged environments and biology.
