Culturally Responsive Approaches to Health Research with Black Canadians: Challenges and Strategies

Canada’s Black population has more than doubled over the last two decades, with the fastest growth occurring in the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Despite a growing interest in Black health research in Canada, there is still limited knowledge on culturally responsive approaches to collecting, analyzing, and reporting health data on Black Canadians. This review presents a synthesis of challenges and strategies for conducting culturally responsive health research in Black communities.

Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s framework [1], this scoping review addresses the questions: What cultural considerations inform health data collection methods with Black Canadians on the Prairies? What gaps exist in current use of culturally appropriate approaches to health research with this population? We systematically searched selected electronic databases—Sociological Abstracts, PsychINFO, Embase, Social Science Citation Index, Social Services Abstract, Social Work Abstracts, CINAHL, Scopus, Medline, Cochrane Library, Proquest, and Web of Science—for studies on Black health in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. We completed a citation chaining of selected studies, searched thesis repositories, and consulted Black health researchers on the Prairies. Using our inclusion criteria, we screened 453 records and selected 27 articles for the review.

Most of the included articles described research conducted in Alberta (77.7%) and between 2015 and 2022 (74.1%). We identified four themes relevant to culturally responsive approaches to Black health research: use of theory in research design; research leadership; research participation, uptake, and community engagement; and data collection procedures.

Black leadership, critical representation on project teams, and partnerships with community gatekeepers can improve trust, acceptability, and research uptake. Cultural considerations in Black health research include attending to gender, age, and religion in data collection. There is also a need to reform research practices and guidelines to attend to the social, cultural, and religious needs of Black Canadians.