Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research Policies of Major Public Granting Agencies: A Global Review

National research agencies are funded by taxpayer monies and, as such, are responsible for promoting excellent research that benefits all of society. Integrating sex, gender and diversity analysis (SG&DA) into the design of research, where relevant, can improve research methodology and provide new insights. To realize this potential, funding agencies have developed policies for integrating this type of analysis into the grant proposal process. This study reviews those policies for 23 agencies across six continents. Overall, one agency achieved superior performance, six agencies scored excellent performance, five showed average performance, two need some improvement and nine require improvement. Our study developed a five-part SG&DA policy roadmap for agencies and collected best practices across that guide. Standard practices, tailored as appropriate to country-specific cultures and regulatory landscapes, will enhance collaboration potential, global equity, research excellence and reproducibility.

Struggling with good intentions: Music education research in a “post” world

In this Perspectives article, the author grapples with the personal challenges of attempting to do ethical and high-quality research in the post world of the maturing 21st century. Among the challenges addressed are matters of purported relevance of research, equity research conducted by nonmembers of equity-seeking groups, the impact of rankings and metrics, peer review, and the relationship between good intentions and symbolic violence.

Equity Tourism: Ravaging the Justice Landscape

As the long-standing and ubiquitous racial inequities of the United States reached national attention, the public health community has witnessed the rise of “health equity tourism”. This phenomenon is the process of previously unengaged investigators pivoting into health equity research without developing the necessary scientific expertise for high-quality work. In this essay, we define the phenomenon and provide an explanation of the antecedent conditions that facilitated its development. We also describe the consequences of health equity tourism—namely, recapitulating systems of inequity within the academy and the dilution of a landscape carefully curated by scholars who have demonstrated sustained commitments to equity research as a primary scientific discipline and praxis. Lastly, we provide a set of principles that can guide novice equity researchers to becoming community members rather than mere tourists of health equity.

Eliminating Disparities and Achieving Health Equity Using Implementation Science

Eliminating health disparities and achieving equity are central to aging services, programs, and research, as we work to ensure older adults are treated equitably compared to their younger counterparts. Additionally, aging services, programs, and research are not immune from the structural racism and other inequities that plague all facets of our lives, and we must work to eliminate disparities within them as well. This presentation will discuss how Implementation science can be used to advance both of these fronts. Implementation science frameworks can be used to ensure multiple levels of context are considered, which is critical when working against something as pervasive and structural as racism. Implementation science can also guide the adaptation of evidence-based interventions for different populations, including for older adults or for different racial or ethnic groups. Furthermore, there are important ways health equity research can improve implementation science that advance the shared goal of eliminating disparities.

Critical Narrative Intervention for Health Equity Research and Practice: Editorial Commentary Introducing the Health Promotion Practice Critical Narrative Intervention Special Collection

This special collection of Health Promotion Practice introduces critical narrative intervention (CNI) as a key theoretical framing for an asset-based, narrative, and participatory approach to promoting health and addressing social inequality. Innovative digital and visual methodologies highlighted in this special collection—comics and graphic novels, cellphilms and other participatory film, story booths, digital storytelling, and photovoice—are changing the way critical public health researchers and practitioners forge new knowledge, creating new possibilities for interdisciplinary and activist-based inquiry. Public health research and engagement efforts that critically contend with historically repressive structures and intervene through narrative and participatory processes to enact change with and for disenfranchised communities are long overdue. This special collection showcases six CNI projects that promote equity and justice in the context of LGBTQ, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse young people; people who inject drugs living with hepatitis C virus; young women who trade sex; undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants; and people living with HIV/AIDS. It is our intent that this collection of exemplars can serve as a guidepost for practitioners and researchers interested in expanding the scope of critical public health praxis. Individually and collectively, the special collection illustrates how CNI can create space for the increased representation of historically silenced populations, redress stigma, and provoke important questions to guide a new era of health equity research.

Rapid-Cycle Experimentation With State and Federal Policymakers for Optimizing the Reach of Racial Equity Research

Racial disparities and racism are pervasive public health threats that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is critical and timely for researchers to communicate with policymakers about strategies for reducing disparities. From April through July 2020, across four rapid-cycle trials disseminating scientific products with evidence-based policy recommendations for addressing disparities, we tested strategies for optimizing the reach of scientific messages to policymakers. By getting such research into the hands of policymakers who can act on it, this work can help combat racial health disparities. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 9, 2021:e1–e4. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306404 )

Differential Access to Park Space Based on Country of Origin within Miami’s Hispanic/Latino Population: A Novel Analysis of Park Equity

Some U.S.-based park equity studies reveal that affluent and White neighborhoods have privileged access to greenspace. In such studies in the U.S. and elsewhere, park access indicators are typically examined in relation to measures of income, housing tenure, and broad race/ethnicity categories (e.g., Hispanic/Latino, Black, and White in the U.S.). The treatment of people as monolithic ethnic groups in park equity research is potentially misleading, particularly in global cities where ethnic populations are highly heterogeneous. In this study, we assess inequities in access to park space within the diverse Hispanic/Latino population of the Miami Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) based on national origin. We specified multivariable generalized estimating equations to examine social correlates of area-weighted park access at the census tract level. Our first model includes a variable for the proportion of the tract population of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity, which we substitute in the second model with variables representing the proportions of the tract population from the most populous country-of-origin groups in the MSA applicable to the Hispanic/Latino population. Our first model indicates robust negative relationships for the proportion Hispanic/Latino and Black/African American variables with area-weighted park access, adjusting for median household income, renter-occupancy, and old and young population composition. Our second model indicates negative relationships based on Cuban and Venezuelan neighborhood composition, while the four other country-of-origin subgroup variables exhibit statistically non-significant associations with area-weighted park access. Study findings have implications for the analysis of ethnicity categories in park equity research and interventions to promote park equity, especially in global cities.