Office of Management and Budget Racial/Ethnic Categories in Mortality Research: A Framework for Including the Voices of Racialized Communities.

Since its founding, the US government has sorted people into racial/ethnic categories for the purpose of allowing or disallowing their access to social services and protections. The current Office of Management and Budget racial/ethnic categories originated in a dominant racial narrative that assumed a binary biological difference between Whites and non-Whites, with a hard-edged separation between them. There is debate about their continued use in researching group differences in mortality profiles and health outcomes: should we use them with modifications, cease using them entirely, or develop a new epistemology of human similarities and differences? This essay offers a research framework for including in these debates the daily lived experiences of the 110 million racialized non-White Americans whose lived experiences are the legacy of historically limited access to society's services and protections.

Racially Ambiguous Babies and Racial Narratives in the United States: A Growing Contradiction for Health Disparities Research.

Researchers attempting to identify and track health disparities and inequities generally use five racial or ethnic (R/E) categories-four racial groups (white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian) and one ethnic group (Hispanic)-to analyze and predict variations in health outcomes in the overall U.S. population.

California And The Changing American Narrative On Diversity, Race, And Health.

The historical narrative on diversity, race, and health would predict that California's population change from 22 percent racial/ethnic minority in 1970 to 62 percent in 2016 would lead to a massive health crisis with high mortality rates, low life expectancy, and high infant mortality rates-particularly given the state's high rates of negative social determinants of health: poverty, high school incompletion, and uninsurance. We present data that suggest an alternative narrative: In spite of these negative factors, California has very low rates of mortality and infant mortality and long life expectancy. This alternative implies that racial diversity may offer opportunities for good health outcomes and that community agency may be a positive determinant.