Project Summary
The project team has positioned African immigrant communities as co-governers of the knowledge systems to address the long history of erasure of African immigrant identities and lived experience by developing, testing, and translating an Afrocentric Palava (“having a conflict”) Hut Conversation framework rooted in African epistemologies into practical tools that can reshape how health research is conducted, governed, and evaluated in the United States.
Research Questions/Aims
- How can components of a culturally grounded research framework rooted in African epistemologies be applied to transform health research systems and advance racial equity for African immigrant communities in the United States?
Actionability
- Provide actionable guidance for institutional practices such as IRB review, research governance, and standards of rigor; and
- Contribute a scalable model for decolonized research that redistributes interpretive authority, advances epistemic justice, strengthens community trust, and supports more effective prevention and care services for African immigrant communities.
Meeting the Moment
This project is happening at a critical time when harmful rhetoric and systemic exclusion continue to marginalize African immigrants. The team situates their research within what they call a “critical window of opportunity” based on the erosion of the public health infrastructure and declining trust in science, which heightens the urgency of their work. This project has the potential to serve as a scalable model for decolonized research that redistributes interpretive authority, advances epistemic justice, strengthens community trust, and supports more effective prevention and care services.
Outcomes
Health Outcomes: Prevention and care services for African immigrant communities
Other: Cultural values and epistemological principles, ethical expectations for research conduct, community priorities for research engagement, experiences related to trust, harm, or exclusion, and community-derived recommendations for improving research practice
Methodology
The team will use a sequential mixed-methods design that moves from exploration to co-design to pilot testing. In AIM 1, qualitative data from Palava Hut Conversations with African immigrants and consensus data from a three-round Delphi survey with research system partners will help the team identify core cultural principles, ethical expectations, and system-level considerations. A collaborative thematic analysis approach will be used, in which African Immigrant Health Research Collaborative (AIHRC) partners will jointly code transcripts. In AIM 2, these findings will be synthesized through a national virtual think tank where community and research system partners will use participatory systems mapping to co-design the framework and identify institutional leverage points for change. Following the national think tank, AIHRC will hold a series of development sessions to produce a culturally grounded research framework co-designed by community and research system partners, with actionable institutional leverage points identified through systems mapping. In AIM 3, the framework will be pilot-tested through high-fidelity, scenario-based simulation to assess acceptability, usability, feasibility, and system-level implications. After the simulation session, the study team will produce materials (e.g., workflow templates, IRB checklists, consent scripts, decision-making aids) and a structured summary of institutional leverage points, barriers, and facilitators observed across scenarios, documenting where African epistemologies were supported, resisted, or required system adaptation.
African Immigrant Health Research Collaborative (AIHRC)
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School Interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation (iCELS)