This story was originally published online with Word In Black, a collaboration of the nation’s leading Black news publishers (of which The Informer is a member) and edited for clarity.
Middle-aged and aging alumni of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) could very well be reaping health benefits decades later, according to a recent study.
Researchers examined a sample of 1,978 Black American adults who attended college between 1940 and 1980, 35% of which had attended an HBCU. The study also examined college attendees who had also attended high school in a state that has an HBCU.
The study, published on the JAMA Network Open website, found that “HBCU attendance was associated with better cognition compared with PWI attendance for aging Black adults.”
The study also found the positive outcome held for those attending college before and after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling ending racial segregation in schools. Data for this recent study came from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke study, which had recruited Black and white adults aged 45 years and older, from 2003 to 2007.
A total of 56% of the Black participants lived in the nation’s Stroke Belt — the eight Southern states that have a higher than average number of stroke deaths.
Better Memory, Language, and Overall Cognition
The study finds HBCU alumni outperformed their peers from predominantly white institutions in memory, language, and overall cognition decades later.
The alumni were in school during the 1954 Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, as well as during and after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which effectively ended legal racial discrimination in the nation’s schools.
“HBCU attendees had better cognition across all three of those different time periods,” Dr. Marilyn Thomas, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an interview with The Guardian.
Black adults aged 62 who had attended an HBCU had better memory and cognitive function than those who attended a predominantly white institution.
There are indications that having college education may reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias — also called ADRD.
However, there are still disparities in the rate of cognitive diseases between Black and white college-educated individuals. More than 7 million Americans are living with ADRD.
Further, more than 60% of them are women and Black Americans are at least twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s, the seventh leading cause of death for all Americans, specifically as whites.
Segregation-Ending Policies May Affect Brain Health Longterm
This “exploratory” study is the first of its kind since this one specifically looked at the schools’ environments, while previous studies examined how the number of years of schooling affects cognition.
Thomas describes the study as a “first step,” so it’s likely further studies will be needed to see if other scenarios have affected the alumni. For example, someone who got a bachelor’s degree from a predominantly white institution for undergraduate school, but then attended an HBCU for graduate school may have a different outcome.
“There’s a growing body of evidence demonstrating that those years of schooling differently impact people by race,” Thomas explained.
Instead of measuring how many years the participants attended college, this study examined whether attending an HBCU for any length of time was associated with a positive outcome.
“What’s really important about this finding is that it suggests that, yes, culturally affirming spaces actually can help promote and protect cognitive health,” Thomas said. “It’s even more than that because it doesn’t just demonstrate that it’s protective against cognitive health, but the benefits to this exposure last well beyond graduation – these are people at mean age 62. These benefits are long-lasting.”