Expanding Bystander Behavioral Approaches to Address Racial Violence in Health Research, Pedagogy, and Practice

A bystander to racial violence is conventionally thought of as someone who witnesses an overt act of racial oppression at the interpersonal level, such as police brutality. However, racial violence in health research, pedagogy, and practice often shows up more covertly, like through epistemic injustice, deficits-based framing, and racial essentialism. We aim to expand how we think about bystanders and perpetrators of racial violence within health institutions, and how antiracism bystander behavioral approaches can be deployed to intervene against such violence. Existing public health antiracism frameworks, such as the Public Health Critical Race Praxis and the PEN-3 Cultural Model, offer valuable constructs and processes through which health practitioners, researchers, and academics can disrupt racial violence. Such antiracism frameworks are well suited to provide individuals within public health and health care with the knowledge, skills, and efficacy to intervene as engaged bystanders against racism within their contexts. To illustrate how constructs within antiracism frameworks can be applied by bystanders in various health settings, we outline case examples of antiracism bystander interventions across three scenarios. The more bystanders there are within health institutions that are equipped with antiracism tools, the more likely normative behaviors uplifting White supremacy within these institutions can be disrupted and health equity can be actualized.