Answering the Call: Experiences of Implementing Antiracist Interventions in Health Care

Since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic and police violence against Black Americans made undeniably visible inequities in health outcomes based on race, health professionals have issued calls for their colleagues to practice antiracism. Yet few studies have qualitatively described the experiences of health professionals who have implemented antiracist interventions to identify the factors that make them successful. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 51 health professionals and administrators who had introduced changes in their clinical practices explicitly to address health inequities based on race. The interventions focused on removing barriers to access for patients who lack the linguistic, economic, or cultural resources to navigate a complicated health care system. Interprofessional collaboration, leadership support, and community trust facilitated the success of the interventions. Restrictive insurance reimbursement policy was the most cited barrier. The experiences of these health professionals illustrate possibilities for implementing antiracist interventions at the point of care.