Overview

What happens when inequality doesn't just shape opportunity, but gets under the skin? This book examines how urban environments, structural racism, masculinity, and chronic stress converge to shape the health of Black and Brown men at the biological, emotional, and generational level. Moving beyond deficit-based narratives, it explores how forces such as environmental exposure, housing instability, food apartheid, policing, incarceration, and gender norms quietly rewire stress systems, immune function, hormonal regulation, and long-term health outcomes. Blending public health research with lived experience, this work makes complex science accessible-unpacking epigenetics, inflammation, cortisol, and environmental health in plain language while grounding the analysis in the everyday realities of urban life. The book traces how inequality becomes embodied over time, showing how survival itself can carry physiological costs, but also how care, resistance, and community repair can interrupt these cycles. At its core, this is not a book about pathology, it is a book about context. It challenges the idea that poor health outcomes among Black and Brown men stem from individual failure, instead revealing how systems of disinvestment, surveillance, and exclusion shape both behavior and biology. Masculinity is examined not as a problem to be fixed, but as a social script that can both protect and harm depending on the conditions men are asked to endure. The book also turns toward healing and possibility. Through examples of community-led health initiatives, barbershop interventions, food sovereignty movements, mentorship, fatherhood, and data reclamation, it highlights how Black and Brown communities are redefining health on their own terms. Research itself becomes a site of resistance when communities move from being studied to being co-creators of knowledge. Written for general readers, educators, public health professionals, and anyone invested in racial and health justice, this book invites readers to reconsider how cities shape bodies, how care operates under pressure, and how healing becomes possible when we address not just people but the environments that surround them.

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Carlin Dexter Nelson, PhD, MPH, CPH, CHES(R), is an epidemiologist, public health educator and scholar committed to examining how systems of inequality shape health across urban communities. He is Certified in Public Health (CPH) and is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES), combining rigorous epidemiological methods with culturally grounded health promotion. He holds an Associate of Science (AAS) from Trident Technical College (TTC), a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Public Health with a minor in Sociology from the College of Charleston (CofC), a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), where he was an Interprofessional Education Fellow, and a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Public Health-Epidemiology from Walden University. Currently, Dr. Nelson teaches in the Department of Health Sciences at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he leads courses in epidemiology, health statistics and research, health promotion, drug education, and urban health. His previous professional experience includes roles at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Truth Initiative, Johns Hopkins University, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), College of Charleston, as well as a translational research fellow at Nemours Children's Hospital. His research has been published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, the International Journal of Human Rights in Healthcare, the Association of Black Nursing Faculty Foundation Journal (ABNFFJ), and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Across these outlets, his work examines social determinants of health (SDOH), racial and gender disparities, and community-driven public health strategies. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Dr. Nelson grew up in Title I schools and a subsidized, single-parent household with experiences that fuel his passion for community-rooted scholarship. A proud TRiO Upward Bound alum who later returned as a mentor and administrator, has spent over five years mentoring first-generation and underserved students through TRiO and the NIH STEP-UP program. Dr. Nelson is driven by the belief that our present circumstances do not define our future. Through teaching, research, and writing, he continues to show up for the next generation of public health leaders, reminding them that someone, somewhere, at some point in time is counting on them to rise.

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