Race and research: How public health experts can reduce racial bias in their work

How can public health researchers address racism? That ’s the focus of a supplement to the latest issue of the journal Ethnicity& Disease, for which UCLA professor Chandra Ford served as a guest editor.“Race is a social construct and not a biological attribute, but scientists continue to design studies that reinforce the notion that race and ethnicity are causes of health outcomes,” said Ford, an associate professor of community health sciences and the founding director of theCenter for the Study of Racism, Social Justice& Health at theUCLA Fielding School of Public Health.The journal supplement includes a collection of papers based on critical race theory, a concept developed more than three decades ago by legal scholars that illuminates the subtle ways racism matters in any situation.“Critical race theory helps public health researchers avoid common pitfalls that pervade the field and limit the capacity to achieve equity,” Ford said. “These pitfalls include erroneously targeting biological or cultural characteristics of minorities as the root cause of the disease, thus mis sing the true cause; and conflating the effects of racism with those of race or ethnicity and reinforcing racial or ethnic stereotypes.”For example, Ford said, a researcher might incorrectly jump to a conclusion that differences between white and black people observed in a study are due to genetic factors, even if that researcher did not actually analyze their genetic backgrounds.A p...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news