Communicating Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism

Wicked Problems

The resources below represent some of the biggest challenges to communicating race, racism, and anti-racism in health contexts.

Legacy of Racism in U.S. Healthcare

Related resources

• Reimagining Mental Health Discourse Among African Americans, with Dr. Shaun Fletcher
• Racism and Health I: Pathways and Scientific Evidence, review article by David R. Williams and Selina A. Mohammed

Public Health and Risk

It Takes a Toll: Podcast exploring the public health impacts of police violence and a potential public health response 

Additional audio and video media

• The Atlantic podcast, “How racism kills Black Americans”
• The problem with race-based medicine, TEDMED talk with Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania
• How the U.S. medical community fails Black mothers, TEDMED talk with Wanda Irving, health equity and racial equality advocate
• “Health costs of racism” podcast from Science Friday, focusing on microaggressions

News and journalistic analyses

• ProPublica, “On the Minds of Black Lives Matter Protesters: A Racist Health System”
• ProPublica, “Lost Mothers” series, "Nothing Protects Black Women From Dying in Pregnancy and Childbirth"
• “When Cities Fail, Babies Die”
• CNN, “The Cruel Double Standard That May Have Saved ObamaCare"
• The Atlantic, Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Research resources

• Racial Equity Tools' Literature review: Media Representations and Impact on the Lives of Black Men and Boys
• “The Framing of Women and Health Disparities: A Critical Look at Race, Gender, and Class”
• “Communication Inequalities during Public Health Disasters"
• “Black Lives Matter Principles as an Africentric Approach to Improving African American Health”
• “Do Black Lives Matter in Public Health Research and Training” 

Responses to Wicked Problems

The resources below represent some of the opportunities for using communicative constructs to address race, racism, and anti-racism in health contexts.

Voices for Racial Justice and Health

Related resources

• Allegories on Race and Racism, TedEx talk by Dr. Camara Jones, a family physician and epidemiologist
• Why Your Doctor Should Care About Social Justice, TedEx talk with Mary Bassett, NYC Health Commissioner

Community, Culture-Centered Solutions

• Communicating for Health Justice: A Communications Strategy Curriculum
• “Communities Building Power for Health” case studies 

Additional audio and video media

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's “Cultures & Health” YouTube channel
• The intersections of BLM and Public Health
• Community, Culture, and Health, from The National Communication Association

News and journalistic analyses

• The Tyee, Out of Tragedy, One Indigenous Nation Built a New Mental Health Model

Research resources

• "A Call to Healing: Black Lives Matter Movement as a Framework for Addressing the Health and Wellness of Black Women"
• “A Culture-Centered Community-Grounded Approach to Disseminating Health Information among African Americans”
• “How Journalists Characterize Health Inequalities and Redefine Solutions for Native American Audiences”
• “Black Lives Matter: Claiming a Space for an Evidence-Based Outrage” 

Relevant books in Fogler Library's catalog

• Body and soul: The Black Panther Party and the fight against medical discrimination, ebook via Fogler Library
• Blacks in medicine: Clinical, demographic, and socioeconomic correlations, ebook via Fogler Library
• Reconciliation in Practice : A Cross-Cultural Perspective, book in the Fogler Library stacks

Relevant Scholarship

Below are relevant databases for finding scholarly journal articles. Journal articles are written by experts in their fields.  In many library databases you can click a "peer reviewed" or "scholarly article" box to produce a list of references to these types of articles.
 

CINAHL: Covers journals in nursing and allied health fields. Example articles include:

• Culture-centered Approach in Addressing Health Disparities: Communication Infrastructures for Subaltern Voices
• Healthcare Providers' Responses to Narrative Communication About Racial Healthcare Disparities
• How Nurses Come to Race: Racialization in Public Health Breastfeeding Promotion

Communication and Mass Media Complete: Literature in communication, journalism, and media studies. Example articles include:

• Communicating Environmental Health Risks with Indigenous Populations: A Systematic Literature Review of Current Research and Recommendations for Future Studies
• Cultural Appropriateness in Health Communication: A Review and A Revised Framework
• Narrative versus Nonnarrative: The Role of Identification, Transportation, and Emotion in Reducing Health Disparities

PsycINFO: Scholarly literature in psychology and related social sciences. Example articles include:

• Dialogue as skill: Training a health professions workforce that can talk about race and racism
• Communicating with diverse patients: How patient and clinician factors affect disparities
• Development of a participatory health communication intervention: An ecological approach to reducing rural information inequality and health disparities

PubMed: Covers medical and some life science journals. Example articles include:

• Detecting implicit racial bias in provider communication behaviors to reduce disparities in healthcare: Challenges, solutions, and future directions for provider communication training
• Breaking the Silence: Time to Talk About Race and Racism
• Cultural competence: A systematic review of health care provider educational interventions