Shifting Towards a Critical Racial Health Equity Lens in Research with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color: Introduction to the Special Issue

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) experience disproportionate health disparities due to health inequities—systematic disparities that are considered unjust, unfair, or avoidable and are a direct result of historical and contemporary social injustices. For BIPOC communities, health inequities stem from systemic racism that intersects with other systems of oppression that drive synergistic stress experiences that further restrict access to critical resources tied to health outcomes. While social determinants of health have long been part of the broader scope of health disparities research, calls to center health equity have increased. We call on health disparities researchers to strive to disrupt systemic racism through a focus on health equity. We believe that health disparities research should incorporate a more critical, social justice, and equity-minded lens to center the sociocultural contexts and lived experiences of BIPOC communities, uplift culturally informed and strengths-based interventions, and develop preventative methods to ameliorate and disrupt racial health inequities in the United States and globally. In this introduction, we briefly highlight the set of articles included in this special issue that showcase a diverse range of cutting-edge and innovative research centering on BIPOC communities. In addition, we offer nine recommendations to shift toward a more critical, intersectional, and social justice-oriented lens in health disparities research.