ABSTRACT
Race and ethnicity are two of the more commonly reported variables in men's health, but what these factors imply and represent is not well understood. While men's health is fundamentally about the unique role that sex and gender play directly or indirectly on individual or population health, it is important to recognize that these effects often depend on factors associated with race and ethnicity for their magnitude and meaning. To this end, this chapter has four goals: (a) to define race and ethnicity, (b) to distinguish race from ethnicity, (c) to discuss why both are relevant for men's health, and (d) to describe how each should be used in men's health research and practice. This chapter describes how an intersectional lens facilitates considering why and how race and ethnicity affect men's health, and the chapter also includes subsections that help to distinguish race or ethnicity from genetics, ancestry, and other factors. The primary goal of the chapter is to demonstrate that race and ethnicity are most useful when men's health researchers and practitioners are explicit about their assumptions and theories about what and how race and ethnicity intersect with gender and sex to affect men's individual and population health.
