Racism has a great impact on the health of racialized groups, leading to greater morbidity and premature mortality. Racism can be defined as a social construct assembled within a network of social, economic, and political relations in which groups of people are classified and hierarchically ordered through a historical process of racialization. The health system is one of the institutions in which racism manifests, posing a fundamental barrier to equitable healthcare.

The RACISMHEALTHCARE project focuses on analysing the barriers to accessing healthcare and the experiences of racism among racialized people in the public health system of the Basque Country (Spain). The study aims to understand how active processes of racial discrimination are produced and reproduced in health services, considering both structural and interpersonal mechanisms.

To this end, the project uses a mixed design based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives in two phases. In Phase I, we will carry out an analysis of the identified barriers and cases of violation of the right to health  based on the database of the Center for Socio-Health Care for Immigrants (CASSIN) of the NGO Médicos del Mundo in the Basque Country.

In Phase II, we will address the experiences of racism in healthcare by the racialized population, their coping mechanisms, and their perception of the impact on their health and use of healthcare using qualitative methodology.

The project is financed by the Call for University-Business-Society Projects 2023 of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and is carried out in collaboration with the NGO Médicos del Mundo in the Basque Country.

The principal investigator (PI) of the project is Yolanda González-Rábago, researcher in the OPIK group of the UPV/EHU. The research team is completed by Amaia Bacigalupe, Elena Rodríguez, Nerea Lamborena, Anna Barbuscia and Roberta Rutigliano from OPIK and Estíbaliz Gil and Xabier Agirre from Médicos del Mundo.

Access to the register of the ongoing review: https://osf.io/76dq3/