Equity Under Attack: Reflections and Strategies for Moving Social Work Health Equity Research Forward Under Political Suppression

Executive Orders and policies under the Trump Administration have drastically altered the federal research landscape. The administration has identified topics including racial justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion; sexual and gender minorities; environmental justice; and violence prevention as antithetical to the administration's ideologies. As a result, federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other institutions to study these topics--all of which carry profound implications for health equity--is largely inaccessible.

This reality has created a crisis for many social work researchers, whose scholarship engages deeply with topics being suppressed by the Trump Administration. How are health equity scholars being impacted by federal policy changes, including grant terminations, language censorship, and other barriers to conducting research? How are these changes impacting career trajectories? Are researchers rethinking their scholarship agendas and methods in light of policy changes, including policies affecting research as well as policies that exacerbate injustices in these topic areas? How are scholars engaging in acts of resistance and advocacy to counter policies that threaten scientific integrity and social work values? And how can scholars obtain alternative resources to support their health equity research?

This roundtable will grapple with these challenging but necessary questions. Speakers include an organizer and four panelists who are promising early and mid-career scholars who conduct research on various aspects of health equity and its determinants and work in states with differing sociopolitical contexts. Panelists' topical expertise is as follows:

Panelist 1 is an expert in trauma-informed and systems approaches to violence prevention. They will describe the multifaceted ways the current administration is defunding and otherwise obstructing violence prevention research.

Panelist 2 is an endowed chair in social determinants of health who qualitatively researches mental health disparities at the intersection of race, class, gender, and culture, with a focus on the mental health of middle-class Black women.

Panelist 3 is a scholar and macro social work practitioner who uses community-based participatory research and Indigenous mixed methods to address health impacts of exposure to environmental changes among Indigenous peoples.

Panelist 4 is an associate professor whose work focuses on youth with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions who are involved in public systems. She will share her experience with an NIH grant termination due to "gender ideology" and strategies for continued resistance and engagement in community-based research to support LGBTQ+ youth.

The organizer is a mid-career researcher with expertise in housing, health disparities, and addiction recovery, whose scholarship draws on policy analysis methods and emphasizes the linkages between research, policy, and practice.

During the roundtable, each panelist will make opening remarks. This will be followed by questions from the organizer addressing the issues previously mentioned (e.g., impacts of federal policy changes on conducting research; reconceptualization of topics; advocacy; alternative funding sources), as well as other questions that may emerge based on current policies at the time of the conference. To maximize participation, audience members will be prompted to raise questions and to share their own experiences contending with these issues.