Antiracist health policy research requires methodological innovation that creates equity-centered and antiracist solutions to health inequities by centering the complexities and insidiousness of structural racism. The development of effective health policy and health equity interventions requires sound empirical characterization of the nature of structural racism and its impact on public health. However, there is a disconnect between the conceptualization and measurement of structural racism in the public health literature. Given that structural racism is a system of interconnected institutions that operates with a set of racialized rules that maintain White supremacy, how can anyone accurately measure its insidiousness? This article highlights methodological approaches that will move the field forward in its ability to validly measure structural racism for the purposes of achieving health equity. We identify three key areas that require scholarly attention to advance antiracist health policy research: historical context, geographical context, and theory-based novel quantitative and qualitative methods that capture the multifaceted and systemic properties of structural racism as well as other systems of oppression.

There have been over one hundred years of literature discussing the deleterious influence of racism on health. Much of the literature describes racism as a driver of social determinants of health such as housing, employment, income, and education. More recently, increased attention has been given to measuring the structural nature of a system that advantages one racialized group over others rather than solely relying on individual acknowledgement of racism. Despite these advances, there is still a need for methodological and analytical approaches to complement the aforementioned. This commentary calls on epidemiologists and other health researchers at-large to engage the discourse on measuring structural racism. First, we address the conflation between race and racism in epidemiological research. Next, we offer methodological recommendations (linking of interdisciplinary variables and datasets and leveraging mixed-method and life course approaches) and analytical recommendations (integration of mixed data, use of multidimensional models) that epidemiologists and other health researchers may consider in health equity research. The goal of this commentary is to inspire the use of up-to-date and theoretically-driven approaches to increase discourse amongst public health researchers on capturing racism as well as to improve evidence of its role as the fundamental cause of racial health inequities.

Background: Structural racism is a complex system of inequities working in tandem to cause poor health for communities of color, especially for Black people. However, the multidimensional nature of structural racism is not captured by existing measures used by population health scholars to study health inequities. Multidimensional measures can be made using complex analytical techniques. Whether or not the multidimensional measure of structural racism provides more insight than the existing unidimensional measures is unknown. Methods: We derived measures of Black-White residential segregation, inequities in education, employment, income, and homeownership, evaluated for 2,338 Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs) in the United States (US), and consolidated them into a multidimensional measure of structural racism using a latent class model. We compared the median COVID-19 vaccination rates observed across 54 New York City (NYC) PUMAs by levels (high/low) of structural racism and the multidimensional class using the Kruskal-Wallis test. This study was conducted in March 2021. Findings: Our latent class model identified three structural racism classes in the US, all of which can be found in NYC. We observed intricate interactions between the five dimensions of structural racism of interest that cannot be simply classified as "high" (i.e., high on all dimensions of structural racism), "medium," or "low." Compared to Class A PUMAs with the median rate of two-dose completion of 6¢9%, significantly lower rates were observed for Class B PUMAs (5¢5%, p = 0¢04) and Class C PUMAs (5¢2%, p = 0¢01). When the vaccination rates were evaluated based on each dimension of structural racism, significant differences were observed between PUMAs with high and low Black-White income inequity only (7¢2% vs. 5¢3%, p = 0¢001). Interpretation: Our analysis suggests that measuring structural racism as a multidimensional determinant of health provides additional insight into the mechanisms underlying population health inequity vis-a-vis using multiple unidimensional measures without capturing their joint effects.

IMPORTANCEPolice contact may have negative psychological effects on pregnant people, and psychological stress has been linked to preterm birth (ie, birth at <37 weeks' gestation). Existing knowledge of racial disparities in policing patterns and their associations with health suggest redesigning public safety policies could contribute to racial health equity. OBJECTIVE To examine the association between community-level police contact and the risk of preterm birth among White pregnant people, US-born Black pregnant people, and Black pregnant people who were born outside the US. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study used medical record data of 745 White individuals, 121 US-born Black individuals, and 193 Black individuals born outside the US who were Minneapolis residents and gave birth to a live singleton at a large health system between