ABSTRACT:
In Canada, the legacy of settler colonialism continues to shape health systems, making racism a persistent and measurable driver of inequity. Racism is a root determinant of health, yet it remains largely invisible within British Columbia Canada’s public health data ecosystem due to the absence of racism data. This perpetuates the cycle of inequity by failing to capture the full scope of racism's impact on health and wellness. What we don’t measure, we can’t see. This project responds to the urgent need for population-level data on racism to inform evidence-based decision-making by offering a foundation and pathway for how this work could unfold – grounded in community knowledge, anti-racist principles, and public health accountability. It invites dialogue about what is required to safely and effectively measure racism, and how public health systems might begin to embed this work across different data ecosystems. We convened a Knowledge Summit titled “Path to Measuring Racism” bringing together Indigenous, Black, and racialized leaders, scholars, and decision-makers to explore how racism manifests in health systems and how it can be measured to drive change. Key findings highlight the necessity of Indigenous, Black, and racialized-led governance in data collection, limitations of existing race-based data efforts, and risks of reinforcing harm if measurement approaches do not center Indigenous governance and self-determination. Participants underscored that without data, public health systems remain unaccountable for the ongoing impacts of racism. Additionally, shifting the focus from those who experience racism to the systems and structures that uphold it is necessary - ensuring that measurement efforts drive systemic accountability. This presentation will share key findings from our work on the path towards measuring racism in our province, discuss challenges and opportunities in measuring racism as a determinant of health, and outline pathways for embedding anti-racism accountability into public health systems.