Community Perspectives on Racial Healing

What/ Purpose: 

Informed by a local Community Advisory Board (CAB), we will investigate community conceptualizations of racial healing and priorities for intervention, including:

1. 1. What is the need for racial healing within the Black community?

   2. How do Black individuals define/understand racial healing? 

   3. What do members of the Black community perceive as the process towards racial healing?

Why: 

Racial stress and trauma have been shown to have negative impacts on Black mental and physical health and overall functioning (Paradies, 2015; Priest, 2013; Williams, 2018). While several interventions have been developed over the last 10 years to address this need, very few of these interventions have been developed with or informed by the Black community (Castelin, 2024). Within research, community perspectives on racial healing are also lacking (Castelin, 2024), creating a potential gap between academic understanding and lived experience. As shared understanding and community input are needed for community empowerment, a sense of ownership, and cultural-relevance (Cargo & Mercer, 2008; Nastasi et al., 2000), these gaps limit the effectiveness and sustainability of developing interventions. The findings of this research may inform interventions and frameworks for racial healing, strengthen academic-community collective understandings of the concept of and need for racial healing, extend existing frameworks for racial healing, and serve as a foundation for community action. 

How: 

Using the participatory research and radical healing frameworks, approximately 25-40 Black adults in the Greater Cincinnati area will be recruited to participate in five focus groups and complete pre- and post-surveys. The focus group data will be analyzed using thematic analysis, alongside descriptive data from the survey. The research team and the CAB plan to create local impacts with this research by disseminating the findings to key organizations within Cincinnati to advance racial healing efforts and achieve systemic changes.