Invited commentary: race, ethnicity, and racism in epidemiologic research-perspectives from Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP)

Abstract

In 2023, Martinez et al (Am J Epidemiol. 2023;192(3):483-496) examined trends in the inclusion, conceptualization, operationalization, and analysis of race and ethnicity among studies published in US epidemiology journals. Based on a random sample of articles (n = 1050) published from 1995-2018, the authors describe the treatment of race, ethnicity, and ethnorace in the analytic sample (n = 414, 39% of baseline sample) over time. The review supplies stark evidence of the routine omission and variability of measures of race and ethnicity in epidemiologic research. Between 32% and 19% of studies in each time stratum lacked race data; 61%-34% lacked ethnicity data. Informed by public health critical race praxis (PHCRP), this commentary discusses the implications of 4 problems the findings suggest pervade epidemiology: (1) a general lack of clarity about what race and ethnicity are; (2) the limited use of critical race or other theory; (3) an ironic lack of rigor in measuring race and ethnicity; and (4) the ordinariness of racism and White supremacy in epidemiology. The identified practices reflect neither current publication guidelines nor the state of the knowledge on race, ethnicity and racism; therefore, we conclude by offering recommendations to move epidemiology toward more rigorous research in an increasingly diverse society.

Keywords: critical race theory; data collection; ethnicity; health equity; measures; race; racism; social construction.