Dismantling Racism & Inequities Lab

Research Statement

Our research program is dedicated to addressing social injustices in research, educational and clinical settings. Field practice helps to contextualize scholarly inquiry and facilitate community-engaged and patient-centered research collaborations. In general, the purpose of our research is to (1) investigate psychological factors that maintain systemic racial inequity that impact health and wellbeing, and (2) address health equities to increase culturally responsive and support healing process for Communities of Color. Our team research in health equities currently emphasizes on the experiences of Communities of Color in perinatal wellbeing, maternal mental health, mortality, morbidity and reproductive justice issues as well as the experiences of Youth of Color with online discrimination.

Racial Discrimination for Women of Color During Perinatal Period

The overarching goal of this project is to (a) describe the experiences of pregnant Women and Mothers of Color about racial bias and discrimination in clinical interaction, (b) to create a roadmap to improve patient-provider communication for Women of Color, and (c) develop a pilot intervention to address racial bias in clinical interaction as a step toward reducing larger systematic disparities in healthcare.

Perinatal Depression and Maternal Health

This overarching goal of this collaboration focuses on assessing for depression symptoms and rate as well as identify barriers to treatment, access to care, and clinical factors to improve maternal and child health, especially among rural minority population. Two research areas in this research domain are:
(1) Identifying depressive symptoms and suicidal risks through early assessment
(2) Identifying barriers to treatment and access to care from a collaborative care approach

Supporting Illinois AOK Networks

This project identify system-level issues that impact outcomes of children in the first 1,000 days of life for 13 counties in Illinois. The goal is to improve children's outcomes and provide support for Illinois counties through systems development efforts.

Race-related Motivated Reasoning

In this project, we are investigating how people’s previously held racial beliefs influence their cognitive processes and interpretations of race-related information, especially in the area of police interactions with People of Color.

Online Racial Discrimination for Youth of Color

This project aims to explore the impact of online discrimination on the mental health for Black adolescents.

Hoang, T. M. H., & Wong, A. (2023). Exploring the Application of Intersectionality as a Path toward Equity in Perinatal Health: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(1), 685. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010685.

Hoang, T. M. H., Wan-Jung, W., Lee, B. A., Lukacena, K. M., & Tabb, K. M. (2022). Navigating Pregnancy and the Healthcare System during COVID-19: A Qualitative Study with Perinatal Women of Color. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(20), 13698. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192013698.

Hoang, T. M. H., Neville, H. A., Spanierman, L. B., & Poteat, V. P. (2021). Examination of social justice behaviors: Testing an integrated model. Journal for Social Actions in Counseling and Psychology, 12(2), 34–53. https://doi.org/10.33043/JSACP.12.2.34-53.

Hoang, T. M. H., Shin, L. J., Xu, S., & Lu, Q. (2020). Coping with breast cancer among immigrant Chinese Americans. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 11(2), 108–116. https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000175.

Neville, H. A., Hoang, T. M. H., & Brown, A. A. (2016). Affirming Blackness: Racial identity from racial color-blindness to critical consciousness. In J. A. Sullivan and W. E. Cross, Jr. (Eds.), Meaning-making, internalized racism, and African American identity. New York: SUNY Press. Retrieved from Research Gate.