Anti-Racism Methods for Big Data Research: Lessons Learned from the HIV Testing, Linkage, & Retention in Care (HIV TLR) Study

Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) contributes three functional elements to health equity studies: a race conscious orientation; an antiracism lexicon based on Critical Race Theory (CRT); and an integrat­ed, reflexive approach. Few big data studies employ all three functional elements. There­fore, this article describes the application of PHCRP to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Testing, Linkage and Retention in care (HIV TLR) study (N=3,476,741), which con­nects multiple large datasets to electronic medical records to examine contextual de­terminants of racial/ethnic disparities in HIV care continuum outcomes in southern Cali­fornia. As HIV TLR demonstrates, PHCRP’s innovative tools and strategies help big data research maintain fidelity to CRT. Ethn Dis. 2018; 28 (Suppl 1):261-266; doi:10.18865/ed.28.S1.261