Abstract
Health disadvantages endured by African Americans represent a persistent challenge to public health officials in the United States (US). Additionally, the efficacy of health-promoting interventions perceivably remains limited in a racialized social context, whereby race-related social stressors linked to historical and contemporary racial discrimination are pervasive. This study departs from the predominant literature on African American health outcomes, which tends to be quantitative and based on the US social context, by conducting in-depth interviews with twenty African Americans who live in Ghana and by exploring how living in the Ghanaian social context, compared to the US, shapes evaluations of health and well-being. Three primary research questions were addressed: (1) how does the experience of living in Ghana shape evaluations of health and well-being; (2) what sociocultural factors influence health and well-being evaluations; and (3) do African Americans who live in Ghana experience ethnoracial discrimination? Based on the interview data and guided by Pearlin et al.’s (1981; 1989) stress process framework, the findings reveal that: (1) overall, the experience of living in Ghana improved evaluations of health and well-being in comparison to living in the US; (2) according to participants, the sociocultural factors that shaped evaluations of improved health and well-being in the Ghanaian social context were increased feelings of safety, increased access to healthy food, improved social relations, improved perceptions of self-determination, and improved perceptions of transgenerational well-being; and (3) experiences of discrimination based on being a foreigner, versus participant’s race, were more frequently reported. However, experiences of discrimination that were reported were relatively infrequent. Implications for immigration, race, health, and policy are discussed.