Too often there is little consideration to identifying or thinking about the exposure and lag times that would be necessary for a relationship to exist between exposure to discrimination and subsequent illness. Most chronic illnesses such as cancer, CHD, diabetes, and hypertension develop over many years and are often diagnosed long after the disease process was initiated. Accordingly, recent exposure to stressors, including discrimination, should not be related to the onset of these conditions. At the same time, because stress can impact the course of disease, it is important to consider how stress might affect the trajectory of an illness. This is especially important given the large racial and SES disparities in the progression of disease. As noted earlier, some recent studies have begun to pay attention to the role of discrimination in the management of chronic illness, healthcare seeking behaviors and in adherence to medical treatment. This is a very promising area in the study of discrimination and chronic disease and is consistent with the literature on stress that indicates that one of the important ways in which stress
