(6) Researching “race”, ethnicity and health: a critical review

Abstract

In a previous article in this series, we posed some questions about the visibility of gender and the relevance of feminism for pharmacy practice research.1 Gendered distinctions are just one of the ways in which sociologists have attempted to categorise and explain the contours of the social world. Another obvious feature of modern societies is their “racialised” or multi-ethnic composition. Recognition of this has focused attention — if somewhat belatedly — on how to account for the health and illness experiences of ethnic or “racial” groups. In this paper, we describe and critique some of the health services and social science research which has explored these issues. Our focus has mainly been the UK literature. Our aim is to raise the profile of questions around “race” and ethnicity within pharmacy practice research, which have hitherto received scant attention.