Departamento de Nutrição, Faculdade de Saúde Pública, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brasil.
Rev Saude Publica. 2013 Feb;47(1):104-15. doi: 10.1590/s0034-89102013000100014.
A recent and comprehensive review of the use of race and ethnicity in research that address health disparities in epidemiology and public health is provided. First it is described the theoretical basis upon which race and ethnicity differ drawing from previous work in anthropology, social science and public health. Second, it is presented a review of 280 articles published in high impacts factor journals in regards to public health and epidemiology from 2009-2011. An analytical grid enabled the examination of conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions related to the use of both concepts. The majority of articles reviewed were grounded in a theoretical framework and provided interpretations from various models. However, key problems identified include a) a failure from researchers to differentiate between the concepts of race and ethnicity; b) an inappropriate use of racial categories to ascribe ethnicity; c) a lack of transparency in the methods used to assess both concepts; and d) failure to address limits associated with the construction of racial or ethnic taxonomies and their use. In conclusion, future studies examining health disparities should clearly establish the distinction between race and ethnicity, develop theoretically driven research and address specific questions about the relationships between race, ethnicity and health. One argue that one way to think about ethnicity, race and health is to dichotomize research into two sets of questions about the relationship between human diversity and health.
提供了一篇关于在流行病学和公共卫生领域研究中使用种族和民族来解决健康差异的最新且全面的综述。首先，它描述了从人类学、社会科学和公共卫生的先前工作中得出的种族和民族差异的理论基础。其次，回顾了 2009 年至 2011 年期间在高影响因子期刊上发表的 280 篇关于公共卫生和流行病学的文章。一个分析网格使人们能够检查与使用这两个概念相关的概念、理论和方法问题。所审查的大多数文章都基于理论框架，并提供了来自各种模型的解释。然而，确定的关键问题包括：a）研究人员未能区分种族和民族概念；b）不恰当地使用种族类别来归属民族；c）用于评估这两个概念的方法缺乏透明度；d）未能解决与构建种族或民族分类及其使用相关的限制。总之，未来研究在检查健康差异时应明确区分种族和民族，开展理论驱动的研究，并解决有关种族、民族和健康之间关系的具体问题。有人认为，思考种族、民族和健康的一种方法是将研究分为两组，一组是关于人类多样性与健康之间关系的问题，另一组是关于种族与健康之间关系的问题。
