🕸️ Chapter 3: Anti-Black Racism and White Supremacy
19 3.6: Barriers in Research
Video 3.2: The Racism in Canadian Dietetics Research Team, representing members from Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Ontario, discusses the institutional, structural, and cultural barriers to securing funding and executing critical anti-Black racism research within academic frameworks.
Navigating Strategies: Locating Anti-Racism & Black Health Funding
When executing health equity or food systems research, a central hurdle is navigating where specialized financial resources exist. Scholars must move past standard generic databases to seek specialized, multi-sector funding channels. Below is a curated list of active institutional opportunities available for anti-racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), and Black health initiatives in Canada:
- The Tri-Agency Grants (CIHR, SSHRC, NSERC): Canada’s primary federal research councils operate under an active EDI Action Plan.
- The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) explicitly allocates funding mechanisms toward addressing the social and structural determinants of Black health outcomes.
- The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) provides Insight Grants and Insight Development Grants that heavily weigh EDI implementation in both research design and core team compositions.
- The New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF): This federal fund explicitly backs high-risk, high-reward, interdisciplinary international research. NFRF evaluates proposals using transparent, mandatory EDI assessment criteria to bypass traditional, exclusionary reputational networks.
- Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC): PHAC administers targeted national grants, such as the landmark Promoting Health Equity: Mental Health of Black Canadians (MHBC) Fund, designed specifically for interdisciplinary health equity initiatives.
- Institutional and Internal Initiatives: Major research universities provide dedicated foundational tracks, such as the University of Toronto’s Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers (developed alongside the Black Research Network), which specifically funds initiatives addressing health disparities and structural racism.
Educator’s Tool: Applied Grant Writing & Partnership Practice
Working closely with a classmate or professional colleague, conduct an environmental scan of your local province or region. Identify at least two regional foundations, healthcare networks, or non-profit trust funds that offer community-based research grants for health equity, and append them to this structural framework.
This chapter offers a direct opportunity to help students build tactile, professional competencies in grant design, methodology alignment, and community accountability. Consider utilizing the following scaffolded assignment blueprint:
- Environmental Scan & Literature Review: Direct students to review contemporary dietetics literature to map clear gaps regarding Black community health outcomes, food security metrics, or systemic agricultural barriers.
- Community-Led Identification: Have students locate a real-world, Black-led community organization, agricultural collective, or health advocacy group that would act as the principal beneficiary of this research.
- The Mock Proposal: Using the structural frameworks provided below, students will write a formal practice grant application. The proposal must show a decolonized, reciprocal methodology where the community organization co-leads the research questions and holds absolute agency over the data and funding benefits.
Essential “How-To” Grant Writing Manuals
Incorporate these primary structural guidelines directly into your classroom syllabus to assist students in drafting competitive proposals:
Stop and Reflect