Organizational and Individual Health, Behavior, and Psychology

Introduction This study seeks to understand the best ways to address racial and ethnic disparities within healthcare institutions, with a particular focus on organization management. The study draws upon learnings from the Disparities Solution Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and specifically references data produced from the Disparities Leadership Program (DLP) that began in 2007. The…

Introduction Racism in healthcare settings is a persistent and complex problem for both healthcare delivery and access to health services. Over the past decade, several publications demonstrate the experiences of racism faced by minoritized patients such as the enduring racist assumptions about pain tolerance of Black people, the low propensity for screening Black women for…

Introduction This cohort study aims to identify, address and quantify the relationship between longevity ( “all cause mortality”) and wealth as it relates to Black individuals versus white individuals. Furthermore, the study then models how reparations payments to the black community could potentially affect the longevity ( “all cause mortality”) gap between Blacks and whites.…

Introduction Many White-serving educational institutions focus on colorblind or race neutral policies to advance racial equity in faculty hiring. This approach has led to inequitable hiring practices and a lack of racially minoritized faculty. This study aims to interrogate how professors can rethink their organizational culture to advance racial equity in the hiring process. The…

Introduction Since the tragic murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, many healthcare organizations have created initiatives to promote anti-racism; these initiatives have ranged from organizational anti-racism statements to Black Lives Matters lanyards to the development of numerous anti-racism taskforces. In this research article, the authors seek to move beyond these more symbolic forms of…

Organizations can do more than report health disparities by integrating interventions to reduce disparities into their quality improvement processes. Introduction In this special symposium, the authors report findings from Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This project investigated and evaluated interventions to reduce racial and ethnic…

Introduction The Black Lives Matter movement has put the spotlight on the costly impact of racism on Black lives and led to a growing recognition that racism has a structural basis and is embedded in long-standing social policy. Racism is not ahistorical and neither are U.S. health care and public health institutions and practices. Drs.…

Introduction Cities are important ecosystems shaped by dynamic and interdependent biological, physical and social influences. However, Schell et al. note that few studies link research on urban ecological and evolutionary studies to that of social inequality. They argue it is integral to integrate these disciplines as human-created systems of power create uneven impacts on non-human…

Introduction The #MeToo movement has sparked a global conversation about sexual harassment, giving researchers a rare opportunity to advance scholarship on a topic of wide public interest. However, most sexual harassment research describes a narrow group of people: white, cisgender, and heterosexual women. The dearth of literature on sexual harassment experienced by Black women, and…

Introduction Despite the demonstrated benefits of preventive medicine, only 45% of American adults typically get a flu shot during flu season. Vaccine hesitancy is particularly common among Black and white lower socioeconomic status men, who don’t trust doctors and are skeptical of the benefits relative to the perceived risk. For Black Americans, this mistrust is…