In an American Journal of Public Health editorial now available via open access, AAMC Center for Health Justice founding director Philip M. Alberti, PhD and co-authors provide research-informed, practical recommendations to support a shift in scientific practice. The recommendations reject flawed uses of race, and center the measurable impacts of racism on health and well-being. Some recommendations include:
- Avoid using race as a predictor variable unless explicitly conducting race- or racism-conscious research.
- Use race to assess sample representativeness and generalizability.
- Include socioeconomic status or related concepts, but do not treat them as substitutes for racism.
- Assess whether adding or stratifying by race improves model performance.
The authors also urge researchers to dive deeper when developing measures, models, and collaborations to ask how racism might be operating, and how researchers might intervene to dismantle it through science, interpretation, and implementation.