Environmental and psychosocial factors relating to hypertension and cardiovascular disease are incompletely understood, particularly for women and African Americans. Recent research has suggested that job strain is more strongly linked to elevated work blood pressure in men than women. In contrast, the combination of having a high status job plus the trait of high effort coping style (John Henryism) was related to higher work blood pressure in women and African American men, but not Caucasian men.