As population health scientists continue to create scholarship linking the historical and contemporary impacts of structural racism and health inequities, there is an increasing need to explore additional data sources and measures that capture the complex geographic, historical, and sociopolitical realities that contribute to health inequities. Additionally, to create truly antiracist research, insight from communities affected by structural racism and organizations working to dismantle structural racism is needed to inform the research agenda.
In measuring structural racism, there are a number of geographic, group, and contextual factors to consider. This workshop aims to discuss these analytic considerations in order to increase participants’ skills in both evaluating and conducting research on structural racism and health. As interest in structural racism continues to grow, our goal in this workshop is to support the advancement of antiracist population health research by providing participants with a theoretical and analytic understanding of the methodologies often used to measure structural racism. This workshop will use segregation indices (dissimilarity index, index of concentration at the extremes, etc.), which are the most commonly employed measures of structural racism in the literature, as an example to discuss how different measures can be used to measure spatial segregation and how these measures may capture different aspects of the same phenomena. Further, we hope to explore the theoretical underpinnings of structural racism measures in ways that encourage scholars to engage in antiracism research that extends beyond the simple explanation of health disparities.
This workshop will provide scholars with an opportunity to 1) identify the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with measuring structural racism’s impact on population health outcomes, and 2) gain insight from community organizations on what community organizations need most from this work. The workshop will consist of two parts. First, participants will explore how publicly available datasets can be used to measure both the historical and contemporary manifestations of structural racism. Participants will be given the opportunity to explore the usefulness of IPUMS data (ipums.org) and participate in a live demonstration on how to link these data, as has been done in previously published research. IPUMS data experts will be available for a free consultation. Second, participants will participate in a panel discussion regarding academic-community partnership to advance structural racism research. Panelists will include experienced structural racism researchers from the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE) and CARHE’s community partners. Lastly, participants will have the opportunity to discuss potential research collaborations that leverage the data sources while centering community needs.
