Originally published here.

Seismic forces are challenging the UK’s ethno-racial status quo. As a result, many organisations have made public commitments to listen to, learn from, and act on factors sustaining historical and current ethno-racial injustices and inequalities.

The UK health research landscape, with its vast influence on national and global strategy for health and wellbeing, has an opportunity and responsibility to advance a transformative, equity based agenda for change. Racism is currently present throughout UK health research, including commissioning and implementation (both ostensibly underpinned by patient and public involvement), assessment, and dissemination, and we propose actions to produce systemic change. We use an equity approach that moves beyond creating an “equal, level playing field” and instead treats the unequal unequally.

Our analysis is based on an understanding of racism as “the normalisation and legitimisation of an array of dynamics—historical, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal—that routinely advantage white people while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of colour,” based on their physiological appearance or cultural identity (ethnicity). The intersection between ethnicity, race, and health is a product of this systemic discrimination, in which racism—a social construct—not ethnicity causes health disparities. However, reducing racism in health research infrastructure will not in itself solve population health problems. We use the descriptors “racialised minorities,”recognising that disadvantage is not uniform among different minority groups, and “ethno-racial” to refer to the phenotype, ancestry, and self-identification of ethnic and racial groups.

Potential solutions to racism in research

• Include ethno-racial equity in all policies and decisions influencing the research commissioning agenda

• Monitor and improve racialised minority representation in research commissioning leadership roles, on key committees and panels, and in patient and public communities involved in research

• Quantify, report, and resolve variations in research funding, starting with reliable data on funding awards, stratified by ethno-racial group, as the NIHR has started to do25

• Prioritise research questions and outcomes of greatest importance to specific ethno-racial groups

• Establish financial incentives to improve diversity in research institutions by developing criteria modelled on the Athena SWAN Charter33 (linked to improving gender equality in academia), as a condition of NIHR funding.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Key messages

• Racism is evident across the UK health research landscape, from funding bodies through to peer reviewed journals

• UK organisations are beginning to listen to, learn from, and act on factors maintaining historical ethno-racial injustice and social inequity

• Stakeholders must collectively commit to improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in health research, by changing structures, systems, and processes

• Ethno-racial equity requires a research community determined to ensure that health research does not reinforce and exacerbate existing health and social inequities                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      You can read the complete article here.