What if Health Equity Research Focused on Black Thriving?

Focusing on how Black communities have found ways to thrive can transform the questions and solutions researchers pursue.

Well-designed health equity research helps produce the best possible health outcomes for all. Yet so much work focuses on documenting inequities, rather than on collecting evidence about the creativity that communities facing systemic marginalization develop to thrive. Asking more questions about strength, joy, and what promotes healing, can shift the narrative and create new opportunities to understand what success looks like.

That’s how Dr. Yanica Faustin approaches her research, which focuses on diversity of maternal health experiences across the Black diaspora. An associate professor, founder and CEO of Impact Health Equity, and a grantee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Equity Scholars for Action program, Dr. Faustin’s research draws on both quantitative data and life experiences to empower community voices and support lasting change. Dr. Faustin shared critical insights for researchers to incorporate into the work of advancing health equity.

Why is it important to move beyond deficit-based research?

Dr. Faustin: If the only story you tell about Black people is that they are dying at faster rates than White people or are more likely to have adverse outcomes, then that becomes the story we internalize. When studies do nothing more than document the harm of Black inequities, we are looking only at what we’re getting wrong, how we’re falling short, what we’re mourning. That’s the story institutions learn, and it shapes their decisions.

Fostering joy is my attempt to correct that. Research must reflect the richness and diversity of Black life. Black communities are not a monolith. Yet studies treat them as if they are. The literature has been framed in terms of a Black/White disparity while the real story is much more complex. I am a Haitian American who grew up in a remarkably diverse neighborhood with many different types of Black people. So I personally know that we can’t lump everyone together.

My work on maternal health examines the experiences of Black Americans alongside African and Caribbean immigrants because those experiences can differ. I specifically try to interview mothers who have had wonderful birthing experiences, and felt seen and heard and fully held by their communities. We hear the alarming narrative of Black birthing in America, and all of that is true, but Black people don’t often hear positive, hopeful stories as well. Those stories matter. And they should be part of the evidence base.

What advice would you give researchers who want to integrate Black joy in their work?

Dr. Faustin: As researchers, we must acknowledge the existence of Black joy, prioritize it, and reframe questions around it. It’s found in families, neighborhoods, traditions, celebrations, creativity, and everyday moments of connection. It’s the cookouts and talking on the couch with your cousins. It’s everything we have created and contributed, everything we’ve given to the world.

Unless we recognize joy alongside hardship, we’ll struggle to design research that comes not from a place of deficit but from a strengths-based approach. Focusing on joy is not just an idea, or a feel-good sentiment, it can be strategic. It is collecting the data we need to create true solutions. By documenting what communities are doing well, we begin building evidence for what deserves investment. That’s how research becomes part of healing.

Why does changing the narrative matter so much?

Dr. Faustin: Right now, we have built a system that knows how Black communities die but doesn't know enough about how they live. Focusing on poor outcomes contributes to false narratives. What we measure is what shapes beliefs, and those beliefs influence funding. Building a stronger body of evidence around what enables Black thriving can help researchers learn more about interventions that work and create new possibilities for funding and policy. So amplifying positive stories corrects a measurement gap.

What would you like health equity research to look like 10 years from now?

Dr. Faustin: The infrastructure is currently backwards. Researchers come into communities, extract the story, publish it and build careers on it. The most a community receives is a copy of the report and maybe a link behind the paywall. I’d love to see research truly become community-embedded, not simply community-based or community-engaged. Communities should help define the questions, shape the research, and own the narrative.

Harms must of course remain visible, but the narrative must also account for what contributes to thriving communities. Let’s have funding announcements asking researchers to investigate what’s working in communities and how to scale it with the same rigor we’ve devoted to documenting inequities. And let’s recognize how much agency each one of us has, even within the institutions that we are working in. Let’s use that agency and autonomy to be curious, to dream beyond the borders we’ve been given. Let’s use our agency for joy.  

Dr. Faustin reminds researchers that joy is a strength in Black communities. Researchers can honor that by asking new research questions that prioritize this strength and recognize its power for driving change. Every institution can make room for community leadership. Every funder can support research that acknowledges inequity while studying models of success and amplifying Black healing. These actions can help us more fully understand what it takes to move effectively toward health equity and shift the emphasis of health equity research so it leads us towards a better future.

About the author

Caryn Bell is the Associate Director for Partners for Advancing Health Equity and Assistant Professor at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University.