Developing Antiracist Research to Address Racial/Ethnic Health and Socioeconomic Inequities: Conceptual Frameworks That Guide Equity

The primary mission of the social work profession is to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who have been historically marginalized and oppressed. Race is a fundamental determinant of many outcomes that are prioritized by the field. Social work’s commitment to social justice and efforts to advance racial equity in critical areas such as socioeconomics and health are especially salient at this social and political moment in history. To meaningfully advance equity, social work researchers and practitioners must account for and explicitly address legacies of racism. To this end, this paper proposes that social work researchers consider the use of two theoretical frameworks—fundamental cause theory and critical race theory—that provide a conceptual framing of racism and socioeconomic status, which may be used to guide research and practice efforts to disrupt systems of racial oppression.