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Call for papers - Racism as a Public Health Crisis

Guest Editors:

Dr Helen-Maria Lekas: Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and NYU School of Medicine, USA
Daniel López-Cevallos: University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Ash Routen: University of Leicester, UK

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 15 December 2023


BMC Public Health is calling for submissions to its collection on recognizing that racism is a public health crisis. Racism has demonstrated effects on morbidity, mortality and overall well-being and motivates economic and social disparities. There is a need to adopt strategies to address the root causes of racial inequality and for well planned, strategic and sustainable actions to prohibit racial discrimination while treating the underlying factors leading to this.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Dr Helen-Maria Lekas: Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and NYU School of Medicine, USA

A sociologist trained at Columbia University, Dr. Lekas has been working in Public Health for the past two decades. She is a Research Scientist in the Division of Social Solutions and Services Research, at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and an Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Her work is theoretically driven and focuses on improving the health of socioeconomically vulnerable and racialized populations, especially those contending with behavioural health conditions and HIV. Areas of expertise include engagement in medical care, patient-provider relationships, intersectional stigma, and chronic illness management. 

Daniel López-Cevallos: University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

Daniel López-Cevallos is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy, School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research focuses on the intersections of race/ethnicity, migration, gender, class, and other socioeconomic and sociocultural constructs, and their relationship to health and educational issues in the United States and Latin America.
 

Ash Routen: University of Leicester, UK

Ash Routen is a Research Fellow in the Diabetes Research Centre at the University of Leicester in the UK. He works across several areas of interest including ethnic minority health, inclusion and diversity, multiple long-term conditions (multimorbidity), and Covid-19. He serves on the editorial board of BMC Public Health and has authored over 50 publications.


About the collection

Recognizing that racism is a public health crisis which has demonstrated effects on morbidity, mortality and overall well-being and which motivates economic and social disparities is essential in adopting strategies to address the root causes of racial inequality. There is a need for well planned, strategic and sustainable actions to prohibit racial discrimination and treat the underlying factors leading to this. 

Racial discrimination manifests itself in different ways. With a clear connection between poverty and structural racism for example, Sustainable Development Goal 1 - No Poverty looks towards eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 through successful elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.

Systemic and structural racism are embedded in our systems, policies, processes, practices as well as established attitudes and beliefs. BMC Public Health has launched this collection calling for research on racism as a public health crisis. We would particularly welcome submissions addressing:           

• The effects of race and racism on health
• Racism as a barrier to health equity
• Public health policies addressing systemic racism
• Experiences of racism
• The impact of social inequalities on racial disparities

  1. Growing recognition of racism perpetuated within academic institutions has given rise to anti-racism efforts in these settings. In June 2020, the university-based California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) com...

    Authors: Shira P. Rutman, Natasha Borgen, Solaire Spellen, Dante D. King, Martha J. Decker, Larry Rand, Alexis Cobbins and Claire D. Brindis
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:2039
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. The ethnicity data gap pertains to 3 major challenges to address ethnic health inequality: 1) Under-representation of ethnic minorities in research; 2) Poor data quality on ethnicity; 3) Ethnicity data not bei...

    Authors: Joseph Lam, Robert Aldridge, Ruth Blackburn and Katie Harron
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:2025
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. We describe the rationale and study design for “TRUsted rEsidents and Housing Assistance to decrease Violence Exposure in New Haven (TRUE HAVEN),” a prospective type 1 hybrid effectiveness/implementation study of...

    Authors: Guangyu Tong, Virginia T. Spell, Nadine Horton, Thomas Thornhill, Danya Keene, Christine Montgomery, Donna Spiegelman, Emily A. Wang and Brita Roy
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:1545
    Content type: Study Protocol Published on:

  4. Although increasingly being recognized as a driver of poor health and health inequities, there is limited research on the pervasive effects of racism on population health. In this editorial, we set the context...

    Authors: Helen-Maria Lekas, Daniel López-Cevallos and Ash Routen
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:1423
    Content type: Editorial Published on:

  5. Black Americans have disproportionately higher rates and earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) relative to White Americans. We currently lack a comprehensive understanding of how th...

    Authors: Andrea L Rosso, Wendy M. Troxel, Tiffany L. Gary-Webb, Andrea M Weinstein, Meryl A. Butters, Alina Palimaru, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, La’Vette Wagner, Alvin Nugroho, Gerald Hunter, Jennifer Parker and Tamara Dubowitz
    Citation: BMC Public Health 2023 23:636
    Content type: Study Protocol Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of Research Articles. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, SNAPP. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Racism as a Public Health Crisis" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.