Racism and censorship in the editorial and peer review process.

Psychology aims to capture the diversity of our human experience, yet racial inequity ensures only specific experiences are studied, peer-reviewed, and eventually published. Despite recent publications on racial bias in research topics, study samples, academic teams, and publication trends, bias in the peer review process remains largely unexamined. Drawing on compelling case study examples from APA and other leading international journals, this article proposes key mechanisms underlying racial bias and censorship in the editorial and peer review process, including bias in reviewer selection, devaluing racialized expertise, censorship of critical perspectives, minimal consideration of harm to racialized people, and the publication of unscientific and racist studies. The field of psychology needs more diverse researchers, perspectives, and topics to reach its full potential and meet the mental health needs of communities of colour. Several recommendations are called for to ensure the APA can centre racial equity throughout the editorial and review process.

Understanding the Psychological Impact of Oppression Using the Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale.

Oppression refers to systemic discrimination where the injustice targets or disproportionately impacts specific groups of people. The Trauma Symptoms of Discrimination Scale (TSDS) is a self-report measure designed to assess the traumatizing impact of discrimination broadly by measuring anxiety-related symptoms of trauma due to discriminatory experiences. This may include symptoms arising from racism, homophobia, sexism, poverty, or other forms of marginalization. Almost all studies of the TSDS have examined its use in marginalized ethnoracial groups, primarily African Americans. This paper will extend prior work to help us better understand racial trauma across groups by reporting and comparing TSDS mean scores across ethnoracial identities in a diverse national sample (n = 923). It also explores trauma with other marginalized identities and demographic dimensions, including gender, sexual minority/LGBQ status, education, and income. The relationship of TSDS scores to clinical psychopathologies are examined, including stress, depression, anxiety, and PTSD. We also examine the unique risks associated with intersectionality, and how having multiple marginalized identities may increase traumatization. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed.

Correction to: Strengthening the Collection and Use of Disaggregated Data to Understand and Monitor the Risk and Burden of COVID-19 Among Racialized Populations.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s42650-021-00050-2.].

Decolonising the global to local movement: Time for a new paradigm.

Mama Amaan Project (MAP) delivered perinatal education and doula services to underserved refugee and immigrant communities in Seattle, Washington. MAP presented at a 'global to local (glocal)' workshop for US-based global health agencies redirecting their experience and resources to address domestic health crises. Glocal models reference Global South anti-colonial social transformations through Primary Health Care (PHC) - 'health for all as a right' and investment in strong public sectors. As Black women working in our communities, we resisted labelling MAP glocal. Western donors and NGOs appropriate PHC's community participation narratives, meanwhile implementing World Bank/IMF economic structural adjustment health system cuts - thereby shifting austerity-related resource shortfalls to communities. In US contexts of neoliberal shrinking social safety nets and workers' rights, similar strategies to address austerity-related health disparities are promoted as 'global to local'. Projects like MAP cannot substitute quality public services. They expose gaps and build community empowerment to demand quality healthcare. Drawing on MAP and 'global health' experience in Mozambique, we call for re-embracing PHC's activist values - agitating for health as a universal human right for all, rather than putting the burden and blame on underserved communities. We propose decolonising the 'glocal' paradigm by embracing 'transnationality', 'relationality' and 'mutuality'.

Difficulties accessing health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada: examining the intersectionality between immigrant status and visible minority status.

BACKGROUND: Difficulties accessing health care services can result in delaying in seeking and obtaining treatment. Although these difficulties are disproportionately experienced among vulnerable groups, we know very little about how the intersectionality of realities experienced by immigrants and visible minorities can impact their access to health care services since the pandemic. METHODS: Using Statistics Canada's Crowdsourcing Data: Impacts of COVID-19 on Canadians-Experiences of Discrimination, we combine two variables (i.e., immigrant status and visible minority status) to create a new variable called visible minority immigrant status. This multiplicative approach is commonly used in intersectionality research, which allows us to explore disadvantages experienced by minorities with multiplicative identities. RESULTS: Main results show that, compared to white native-born, visible minority immigrants are less likely to report difficulties accessing non-emergency surgical care (OR = 0.55, p < 0.001), non-emergency diagnostic test (OR = 0.74, p < 0.01), dental care (OR = 0.71, p < 0.001), mental health care (OR = 0.77, p < 0.05), and making an appointment for rehabilitative care (OR = 0.56, p < 0.001) but more likely to report difficulties accessing emergency services/urgent care (OR = 1.46, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: We conclude that there is a dynamic interplay of factors operating at multiple levels to shape the impact of COVID-19 related needs to be addressed through changes in social policies, which can tackle unique struggles faced by visible minority immigrants.

Strengthening the Collection and Use of Disaggregated Data to Understand and Monitor the Risk and Burden of COVID-19 Among Racialized Populations.

There is growing evidence that the risk and burden of COVID-19 infections are not equally distributed across population subgroups and that racialized communities are experiencing disproportionately higher morbidity and mortality rates. However, due to the absence of large-scale race-based data, it is impossible to measure the extent to which immigrant and racialized communities are experiencing the pandemic and the impact of measures taken (or not) to mitigate these impacts, especially at a local level. To address this issue, the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership partnered with the Collaborative Critical Research for Equity and Transformation in Health lab at the University of Ottawa and the Canadians of African Descent Health Organization to implement a project to build local organizational capacities to understand, monitor, and mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrant and racialized populations. This research note describes the working framework used for this project, proposed indicators for measuring the determinants of health among immigrant and racialized populations, and the data gaps we encountered. Recommendations are made to policymakers, and community and health stakeholders at all levels on how to collect and use data to address COVID-19 health inequities, including data collection strategies aimed at community engagement in the collection of disaggregated data, improving methods for collecting and analyzing data on immigrants and racialized groups and policies to enable and enhance data disaggregation. Résumé Des plus en plus d'études montrent que le risque et le fardeau des infections à la COVID-19 ne sont pas également répartis dans la population et que les communautés racialisées connaissent des taux de morbidité et de mortalité disproportionnellement plus élevés. Cependant, en raison de l'absence de données ventilés selon le statut ethnique, il est impossible de mesurer comment les communautés immigrantes et racialisées vivent la pandémie et quel est l'impact des mesures prises (ou non) pour atténuer ces effets, surtout à un niveau local. Pour résoudre ce problème, le Partenariat local pour l'immigration d'Ottawa (PLIO) s'est associé au Laboratoire de recherche critique collaborative pour l'équité et la transformation en santé (CO-CREATH) de l'Université d'Ottawa et l'Organisation de la santé des Canadiens d'ascendance africaine (CADHO) aux fins de mettre en œuvre un projet visant à renforcer les capacités organisationnelles locales pour comprendre, surveiller et atténuer l'impact de la pandémie de la COVID-19 sur les populations immigrantes et racialisées. Cette note de recherche décrit le cadre de travail utilisé pour ce projet, les indicateurs proposés pour mesurer les déterminants de la santé chez les populations immigrantes et racialisées, et les lacunes que nous avons identifiés dans les données existants. Des recommandations sont faites aux décideurs politiques et aux acteurs communautaires et de la santé à tous les niveaux sur comment collecter et utiliser les données pour remédier aux inégalités en matière de santé liées à la COVID-19. Ces recommandations font référence aux stratégies de collecte de données visant à impliquer les communautés, à l'amélioration des méthodes de collecte et d'analyse des données sur les immigrants et les groupes racialisés, et aux politiques nécessaires pour permettre et améliorer la désagrégation des données selon le statut ethnique.