Mapping "Race" and Inequality: Best Practices forTheorizing and Operationalizing

描述（由申请人提供）：种族问题继续在各级政府的政策讨论中占据中心地位。特别是在卫生政策领域，自1985年以来，联邦政府制定了若干专门举措，探讨卫生和公共服务部内部的种族差异。即使大多数学者都认为，种族并不能作为一种将人类划分为不同的生物群体的工具，情况也是如此。尽管近几十年来，这种种族建构主义方法在社会科学中占据主导地位，但研究人员在很大程度上未能把握研究设计和解释的相应含义。这是研究基于种族的健康差异的主要障碍。我们在提议的研讨会的标题中加上了“种族”的引号，以质疑关于种族反映了人类之间自然的、基于生物学的分裂的流行观点。种族是一种多维度的社会建构，反映在对权力和社会结构的评价上；文化与表现；个人和集体认同；以及认知和生活经验。种族仍然强大，不是因为种族身份或种族类别说明了某种具有生物学意义的东西，而是因为种族作为一种社会现实的力量，导致个人和社区的生活经历非常不同，助长了健康结果中历史性的、长期的和具体的种族差异。研究健康差异的研究人员应该如何理解和衡量“种族”是一种社会建构的多维现象这一事实？我们的研讨会“绘制“种族”和不平等：卫生政策研究中“种族”理论化和操作化的最佳实践”将准确地探讨将种族作为一个多方面的社会结构来捕捉的挑战。2011年4月28日至29日，我们将召集来自卫生、社会和生物科学领域的20位学者，在“种族”与社会正义研究研究所举行为期两天的密集研讨会，该研究所位于新墨西哥州国立卫生研究院卓越中心——RWJF卫生政策中心。研讨会的目标有三个方面。首先，我们将汇集来自多个学科和社会/生物/健康科学领域的学者，分享他们在种族是社会建构这一理论见解的基础上，如何将种族运作化的策略。其次，我们将为社会科学家通过现有数据集衡量种族制定一套跨学科指导方针。这些策略将构成对研究人员的建议，这些研究人员必须依赖于当前数据集如何操作种族。第三，我们将探索在一个没有资源限制的理想世界中，我们如何在收集新数据时最准确地衡量种族。不受当前数据集或收集原始数据的问题（例如，时间，资源等）的束缚，这个群体将如何寻求在健康研究中衡量种族作为一个多方面的社会结构，并试图超越学科界限和方法取向？修订后的研讨会论文将成为我们共同编辑的《种族差异与卫生政策研究跨学科战略》一书的一部分。我们将寻求一份图书合同以及额外的资金，用于2012年美国科学院年度健康研究会议的全国会议或特别小组。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Race continues to occupy a central role in policy discussions at all levels of government. In the area of health policy in particular, since 1985, the federal government has created several specialized initiatives to explore racial disparities within the Department of Health and Human Services. This is the case even as most scholars agree that that race has no utility as a way of categorizing humans into biologically distinctive groups. Although this constructionist approach to race has become dominant in the social sciences in recent decades, researchers have largely failed to grapple with the corresponding implications for research design and interpretation. This is a major barrier to research on race-based health disparities. We place "race" in quotes in the title of the proposed workshop to call into question popular ideas about race as reflecting natural, biologically based divisions among humans. Race is a multi- dimensional social construction that is reflected in assessments of power and social structure; culture and representation; individual and collective identity; as well as in cognition and lived experience. Race remains powerful not because racial identity or racial categories say something biologically meaningful, but because of the power of race as a social reality that results in very different lived experiences for individuals and communities, contributing to historic, chronic and embodied racial disparities in health outcomes. How should the fact that "race" is a socially constructed, multi-dimensional phenomenon be understood and measured by researchers studying health disparities? Our workshop, Mapping "Race" and Inequality: Best Practices for Theorizing and Operationalizing "Race" in Health Policy Research will explore precisely the challenge of capturing race as a multi-faceted social construction. We will convene 20 scholars from the health, social and biological sciences for an intensive, two-day workshop at the Institute for the Study of "Race" & Social Justice, housed at the RWJF Center for Health Policy, a NIH-Center of Excellence at UNM (April 28-29, 2011). The workshop objectives are three-fold. First, we will bring together scholars from multiple disciplines and from across the social/biological/health science divides to share their strategies for grappling with how to operationalize race given the theoretical insight that race is socially constructed. Second, we will generate a set of trans-disciplinary guidelines for social scientists measuring race via existing data sets. These strategies would constitute recommendations to researchers who must rely on how current data sets have operationalized race. Third, we will explore how, in an ideal world without resource constraints, we would most accurately measure race in the collection of new data. Unfettered by current data sets or the problems of collecting primary data (e.g., time, resources, etc.), how would this group seek to measure race in health research as a multi-faceted social construction and also attempt to transcend disciplinary boundaries and methodological orientations? Revised workshop papers will be part of the edited volume Trans-disciplinary Strategies for Research on Racial Disparities & Health Policy, which we will co-edit. We will seek a book contract as well as additional funding for a national conference or special panel at the annual Academy Health research meeting in 2012. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed project will convene a multi-disciplinary team of race and health experts in a two-day workshop at Institute for the Study of "Race" & Social Justice, Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy at The University of New Mexico (April 28-29, 2011) to inform potential solutions to a pressing issue in medicine; that of conceptualizing and operationalizing race in research on health and disparities. The workshop will produce: (1) Trans-disciplinary guidelines and best practices for measuring race in health disparities research using existing data sets (both quantitative and qualitative); (2) New trans-disciplinary measurement tools and protocols for collecting primary data on race and health disparities (both quantitative and qualitative). Invited workshop participants will contribute to achieving these aims by preparing a 10-20 page paper that addresses the following questions: (1) How does your discipline conceptualize race in health policy research? (2) How do you operationalize and measure race in your research design? (3) What are the best practices for operationalizing race with existing data sources? (4) If you had unlimited resources, how would you conduct a model research project on race and health disparities that captures race as a multi-dimensional social construction and ultimately transcends disciplinary and methodological boundaries? The workshop papers will be published as an edited volume entitled, Trans-disciplinary Strategies for Research on Racial Disparities & Health Policy, which we will co-edit. This anthology would have great appeal to scholars and policymakers alike who face the on-going challenges of collecting meaningful data on race and health disparities.