Measuring Racial Health Equity in Social Care Research

Each year an increasing number of original research articles are published about healthcare-based social care programs and policies. However, relatively few of these studies measure the impact of social care interventions on different racial or ethnic minority groups. More information about differential impacts could help to improve the implementation – and ideally the impacts – of social care. During the SIREN 2022 National Research Meeting: Racial Health Equity in Social Care, physician scientists Crystal Cené and Monica Peek briefly shared findings from a recent review they co-led, funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which involved a collaboration with researchers from both RTI and SIREN. Drs. Peek and Cené in this fireside chat explored what counts as measuring racial health equity (including how they developed a novel framework on “thoughtfulness” and “informativeness”), how much (or little) racial health equity has been explicitly described or measured in the social care interventions evidence base to date, and concrete next steps for researchers and practitioners that can strengthen the racial health equity implications of their work. 

Reference:

Cené CW, Viswanathan M, Fichtenberg CM, et al. Racial health equity and social needs interventions: a review of a scoping review. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(1):e2250654. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.50654