Sociological research seeking to understand how and why these large racial differences in health persist has attempted to delineate what “race” is. The U.S. Government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) currently recognizes five racial categories (white, black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander) and Hispanic or Latino, an ethnic category (Office of Management and Budget 1996). Early research on racial differences in health viewed all observed disparities as reflecting biological differences between racial groups (Krieger 1987). Recent scientific research reveals that human genetic variation, does not naturally aggregate into subgroups that match our racial categories and “race” is in large part a social rather than a biological category (Cooper, Kaufman and Ward 2003).
