Leveraging Reflective Interventionist Conversation Analysis to Advance Racial Health Equity

This chapter explores the benefits and possibilities of using Reflective Interventionist Conversation Analytic (RICA) for racial health equity projects. RICA foregrounds the meaningful participation and perspective of multiple invested parties to encourage reflection on practice, value collaboration, promote open-ended inquiry, and emphasize the importance of making research findings accessible to inform practice. RICA is not deficit- or problem-oriented but focuses on learning how participants in institutional settings work together to achieve their goals. We ask: “How can research findings from conversation analysis research serve to better advance racial health equity in clinical practice?” To explore this question, we situate our discussion of RICA into communication-based racial health equity research, conversation analytic approaches to studying race and racism, and the concept of a learning health system. We offer six considerations for designing and implementing RICA-based health equity research informed by our research on racially discordant interactions in pediatric contexts. While findings from CA studies have significant implications for informing practice, they have been under-considered for their potential to inform the development of interventions and training to address racial inequities in healthcare contexts.