Action Area Three: Embed principles of justice and liberation in health equity research culture

To increase the capacity of the Ways of Knowing ecosystem to embed principles of justice and liberation in health equity research culture, Funders can provide capacity-building support as identified by non-profits throughout the grant period; Journals can develop and support mentorship and health equity training programs; Academia can train senior faculty to apply anti-racist and anti-colonial principles in their research, teaching, and service, while ensuring students develop the same competencies through required coursework; and Non-profits can develop internal research capacity within non-profits and build a pipeline of community leaders by training residents as future community researchers, data stewards, community evaluators, nonprofit leaders, and community advocates.

• Reimagine and adopt flexible reporting and evaluation requirements that respect community-defined measures of success
• Provide capacity-building support as identified by non-profits throughout the grant period
• Define and continuously reflect on what equity and justice mean for your organization to guide processes and requirements
• Commit to analyzing who is applying, who is being funded, and where inequities exist in the funding allocation process
• Increase transparency in decision-making processes by providing feedback to applicants and grantees

• Redesign faculty recruitment and onboarding processes to attract, support, and retain a more diverse faculty body
• Train senior faculty to apply anti-racist and anti-colonial principles in their research, teaching, and service, while ensuring students develop the same competencies through required coursework
• Review existing academic program requirements to identify where these competencies are addressed, and, if missing, develop and embed them into the curriculum
• Equitably compensate community research partners

• Develop and support mentorship and health equity training programs, including commissioning writings and mentorship opportunities for graduate students, early-career scholars of color, and community researchers, offering paid editorial residencies, training reviewers to identify bias, and compensating community members to participate in manuscript review
• Identify and address potential biases in author representation by tracking demographics (authorship, rejection rates)
• Implement public portals to track and annotate the ways racism shows up in the peer review process and train reviewers to identify bias
• Hire a Health Equity Associate Editor to establish anti-racist/anti-colonial work standards and metrics within journal operations

• Establish written agreements and publishing expectations or procedures with research partners (e.g., require co-authorship, prior community review and approval, appropriate acknowledgments, and open access)
• Develop internal research capacity within non-profits and build a pipeline of community leaders by training residents as future community researchers, data stewards, community evaluators, nonprofit leaders, and community advocates