Call for Proposals
Special Issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic
Minority Psychology
Understanding, unpacking and eliminating health
disparities: A prescription for health equity promotion through behavioral and
psychological research
This call for manuscript proposals focuses on research that
can contribute to a better understanding of health disparities among
racial and ethnic minorities in the United States (US) and how to achieve
health equity for all people in the US. Manuscripts included in this
special issue will provide greater clarity about how health disparities should
be defined and how best to study and understand health disparities with the
goal of reducing or eliminating health disparities to create health
equity. The manuscripts will focus on the challenge of reducing or
eliminating health disparities by investigating behavioral and psychological
issues/factors related to health disparities and health equity. In addition,
methodological manuscripts will examine how our conceptualizations and methods
used to examine health disparities have helped or hindered our efforts to
reduce or eliminate health disparities.
Healthy People 2020 has identified eliminating health
disparities as a major goal for improving the nation’s health. Funding has
increased for research that addresses health disparities. The body of
research on health disparities is rapidly growing. As the scope of this
research grows, how best to conceptually frame and study health disparities is
also evolving and needs be examined. Much of the research seems very
similar to race comparative research that has been widely criticized as a
conceptual and empirical approach that is not valid or reliable for
understanding the behavior of racial and ethnic minority people. Race
comparative research allows for the examination of differences between groups
but this approach does not address the underlying processes that contribute to
racial and ethnic differences in health. The same behaviors may not equate to
the same risks or risk reduction for different groups. For example, HIV/AIDS
research has documented that African American youth use condoms more than their
European American counterparts but these young people still have one of the
highest rates of infection. Nor does a race comparative approach fully identify
structural factors within racial and ethnic minority communities that
contribute to or deter heath disparities. Greater understanding of these
processes and structural factors is needed to identify and implement efficacious
and effective interventions to deter health disparities and increase health
equity.
Moreover, even with increased interest in and funds for
studies on health disparities, health disparities are not being substantially
reduced or eliminated. This dilemma raises an important question: Is the
best research that can be conducted on health disparities reflected in the
current body of research in this area? The special issue will address the
challenges to producing work that can be translated into action. The special
issue will be a collection of manuscripts that provide better conceptual and
methodological approaches to how health disparities are defined and
operationalized in empirical studies and how best to study health disparities
to achieve health equity, moving beyond race comparative designs to include
structural and cultural factors and innovative methods. We are especially
interested in health disparities in and risk factors for the development of
physical and behavioral health problems, and factors that promote strength and
resilience to deter health disparities. These factors can be
multi-level risks and protectors at both the individual and structural level
(e.g., an ecological model (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Some may be malleable
and the conditions under which they are malleable can be examined as well as
the mechanisms by which these factors can lead to changes in health. Examples
of health disparities include but are not limited to: HIV/AIDS, obesity,
hypertension, trauma, suicide, stress, unhealthy behaviors, substance abuse and
violence. Manuscripts that focus on risk factors must consider them within the
broader context of health disparities and health equity, rather than focusing
on "deficits" among minority groups.
If you are interested in submitting
a manuscript, please first send letters of intent by
December 1, 2016. Letters of intent
should have fewer than 350 words, and should briefly specify the research
question(s), sample characteristics and procedure, and methods. Importantly,
letters of intent should address how the manuscript will address an area of
health disparity, or risk for the development of a health disparity, and the
methods to probe them. Invitations to submit a letter of intent are not a
guarantee of acceptance of manuscripts for review or publication.
Questions regarding letters of intent or submissions should be directed to Drs.
Norweeta Milburn (nmilburn@mednet.ucla.edu),
Lula Beatty (lbeatty@apa.org), or Tiffany
Yip (tyip@fordham.edu). Authors will
receive a response to their letters of intent by March 1, 2017. Only those
authors whose letters of intent are deemed responsive to the call for this
special issue will be invited to submit a manuscript by October 1, 2017 Manuscripts must be submitted
electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal. The link for the
Portal can be found on the journal website. All submitted manuscripts will be
initially screened by the guest editors and then sent out for blind peer
review. Note that LOIs that are not invited to submit full manuscripts
are welcome to submit to CDEMP through the regular submission
protocol.
The publication target date is Spring 2019.
Reference
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1994).
Ecological models of human development. In International Encyclopedia of
Education, 3(2). Oxford: Elsevier.
Reprinted in: Gauvain, M. &
Cole, M. (Eds.) Readings on the development of children, 2nd Ed.
(1993, pp. 37 – 43). New York: Freeman.
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