Measurement Precedes Change

Structural racism is a core cause of health inequities. Providing evidence of that relationship requires a reliable method to measure structural racism. Frequently, measurements of racism are too simplistic and feed the false narrative that race, rather than racism, is the cause of racial health inequities. In this episode, Dr. Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., a gerontologist and social epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, joins podcast hosts Drs. Szanton and Crews to discuss a framework for assessing structural racial discrimination across contexts, geography, and the life course with the aim of dismantling structural racism and advancing health equity.

References:

1. Thorpe RJ, Szanton SL, LaFave SE. Structural Racial Discrimination and Structural Resilience: Measurement Precedes Change. The Journals of Gerontology. February 2022
2. LaFave SE, Bandeen-Roche K, Gee G, Thorpe RJ, Li Q, Crews D, Samuel L, Cooke A, Hladek M, Szanton SL. Quantifying Older Black Americans’ Exposure to Structural Racial Discrimination: How Can We Measure the Water In Which We Swim? Journal of Urban Health. April 2022
3. Dean LT, Thorpe RJ. What Structural Racism Is (or Is Not) and How to Measure It: Clarity for Public Health and Medical Researchers. American Journal of Epidemiology. September 2022