2026 Encoding Health Equity Summit - Editors Weigh In: Raising the Bar for Health Equity in Publishing-Editors Weigh In: Raising the Bar for Health Equity in Publishing

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The session, moderated by Elena Fuentes-Afleck of the AAMC, focused on an “Implementation Toolkit” for improving how journals address race and ethnicity in research. Dr. Alex Kemper introduced the toolkit, which offers tiered recommendations based on journal resources and covers editorial policy, author guidance, peer review, reporting standards, evaluation, and cross-publisher coordination.<br /><br />Panelists Christine Lane, Dennis Lau, and Alex Kemper discussed what journals should do with the toolkit. Lane emphasized identifying the most effective items amid many checklist options; Lau stressed community buy-in, ongoing iteration, and collaboration with professional organizations; Kemper highlighted improving child health through more thoughtful use of race and ethnicity.<br /><br />The discussion explored the role of journals as gatekeepers, amplifiers, and guardians of both methods and language. Editors should reject poor methodology, require transparency, and avoid language that reinforces race as biological rather than social. They also discussed challenges with legacy datasets, data limitations, and the need to contextualize race and ethnicity differently in global research settings.<br /><br />Audience questions raised journals’ role as agenda-setters, political pressures on DEI language, the impact of LLMs summarizing research without nuance, and publication barriers for early-career or under-resourced researchers. Panelists agreed journals must keep educating, setting standards, and lowering barriers where possible.

Keywords

race and ethnicity

journal editorial policy

implementation toolkit

peer review standards

research reporting

DEI language

research methodology