Tyan Parker Dominguez at the University of Southern California offers a theory to explain the disproportionally high IMR among black women in the United States. She claims African American women experience stress at much higher rates than any other group in the country. Stress produces particular hormones that induce labor and contribute to other pregnancy problems. Considering early births are one of the leading causes of death of infants under the age of one, induced labor is a very legitimate factor. The idea of stress spans socio-economic status as Parker Dominguez claims stress for lower-class women comes from unstable family life and chronic worry over poverty. For black middle-class women, battling racism, real or perceived, can be an extreme stressor. Arline Geronimus, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health calls the phenomenon "weathering". She claims constantly dealing with disadvantages and racial prejudice causes black women's birth outcomes to deteriorate with age. Therefore, younger black women may experience stress with pregnancy due to social and economic factors, but older women experience stress at a compounding rate and therefore have pregnancy complications aside from economic factors. Mary O. Hearst, a professor in the Department of Public Health at Saint Catherine University, researched the effects of segregation on the African American community to see if it contributed to the high IMR amongst black children. Hearst claims that residential segregation contributes to the high rates because of the political, economic, and negative health implications it poses on black mothers regardless of their socioeconomic status. Racism, economic disparities, and sexism in segregated communities are all examples of the daily stressors that pregnant black women face that can affect their pregnancies with conditions such as pre-eclampsia and hypertension. Studies have also shown that high IMR is due to the inadequate care that pregnant African Americans receive compared to other women in the country. In another study, it was shown that Black patients were more likely to receive Ibuprofen after surgery instead of Oxycodone. Several peer-reviewed articles have documented a difference in the levels of care a patient receives when they were black even when they had insurance. IMR does not decrease based on age, or when accounting for higher education suggesting that there is a racial element. This unequal treatment stems from the idea that there are racial medical differences and is also rooted in racial biases and controlled images of black