Sometimes when I read articles in magazines they talk about the effect of race and ethnicity on health. What's the difference between these two things? I thought they were the same thing.
At one time the word race was used to put people in a biologic category. When the DNA code was finally deciphered, scientists realized humans are all the same bilogically. Cracking the DNA code and seeing that all humans are 99.99 percent the same is called the genome project.
As a result of the genome project, the term "race" to describe differences in people could no longer be used. Race is used today to put people in social and political groups. It's actually used in medical and scientific research to profile groups of people. This helps us find out who is at risk for what diseases and why.
Ethnicity looks at where we live and where we grew up, in other words, our geographical origins. Ethnicity also views how we eat, our customs, our traditions, and our habits.
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