This initiative will support intervention research that addresses structural racism and discrimination (SRD) in order to improve minority health or reduce health disparities.
Earliest submission date: February 24, 2023
Letter of intent due 30 days prior to submission.
From FOA PAR-23-112
There is increasing recognition that racism and discrimination contribute to poorer health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and other populations that experience health disparities. In fact, all populations with health disparities experience increased exposure to racism and/or other forms of discrimination over the life course. There is also a growing societal recognition that racism and discrimination extend beyond the behavior of individuals to include SRD, which is embedded in historical societal, institutional, organizational and governmental structures through formal and informal processes, procedures, and practices that limit both opportunities and resources to segments of the population. SRD is supported by the power structures that exist in society and in the institutions that are most likely to influence health outcomes.
Despite this enhanced awareness, racism and discrimination are not routinely included as determinants of health in biomedical research. Health research on racism and discrimination to date has largely focused on interpersonal interactions, and to a lesser extent, one specific form of SRD, residential segregation. Typically, such research focuses on the adverse health consequences of SRD exposures. Less research has explored the resilience among populations exposed to SRD or community strategies to resist or mitigate historic or contemporary SRD exposures. Additionally, intervention research has rarely emphasized reduction of SRD as a strategy to improve health and reduce disparities. Research on mitigation of SRD is needed to inform health care and social policies at all levels.
Health research and interventions need to routinely incorporate constructs and measurement of SRD across multiple socioecological domains and levels of influence in order to improve minority health, promote health equity, and eliminate health disparities (see the NIMHD Research Framework for more information: https://www.nimhd.nih.gov/about/overview/research-framework.html). Examples of domains in which SRD may occur include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Organizational/Institutional: Organizational-level climate; workplace hiring, promotion, or disciplinary practices; academic tracking, stigmatization, school disciplinary and admission practices; tolerance of abuse/harassment; health care system practices.
- Neighborhood/Community: Housing or lending practices and property value assessments; zoning laws; neighborhood distribution of public transportation, green spaces, grocery stores, hospitals and emergency departments, and ambulatory health clinics; resource allocation for schools through local tax base; location of cellular towers for mobile access, highways and major thoroughfares, and industrial or waste sites; criminal justice profiling; police-involved violence; targeted social marketing of harmful or ineffective products; hate crimes.
- Societal: Criminal justice policies and sentencing practices, land/water use rights, self-governance or political representation for tribal communities and US territories, immigration and asylum policies and procedures, gerrymandering, voter suppression laws or practices, religious and cultural discrimination, depiction or representation in national media and social media.
To read more about this funding opportunity: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/par-23-112.html