What we ask
How do personal and community experiences shape expectations of care, and what actions do Black adults take when they anticipate bias, dismissal, or inadequate treatment?
Healthcare trust
How Black adults navigate bias and healthcare institutions
Research examining how healthcare trust develops through lived experience, community knowledge, self-advocacy, and encounters with institutions.
Project overview
Understanding the conditions that shape experience and confidence.
Trust in healthcare is not formed in a single clinical encounter. It develops through accumulated experiences, the experiences shared within families and communities, and the ways institutions respond when people raise concerns. This project centers how Black adults assess care, advocate for themselves, and describe the accountability health systems must demonstrate.
How we study it
Community-engaged qualitative research examines accounts of healthcare encounters, identity-based bias, emotional labor, provider selection, and the ongoing demands of self-advocacy.
Where it leads
The work identifies institutional practices that can move responsibility away from patients having to secure appropriate care and toward systems consistently demonstrating accountability.
Why this matters
Research designed to inform practice.
When patients must repeatedly question decisions, search for unoffered resources, or prepare for dismissal, self-advocacy becomes a burden rather than a choice. This research clarifies how healthcare organizations can earn trust through attentive care, accountability, representation, and sustained partnership with Black communities.
Practical impact
How the work can be used.
We connect research findings to concrete changes in practice, organizational decision-making, and the design of responsive systems.
Responsive care
Translate patients’ experiences into clearer expectations for listening, communication, follow-through, and accountability across healthcare encounters.
Institutional change
Guide organizations in reducing the burden of self-advocacy by making appropriate care and support easier to access without persistent patient intervention.
Community partnership
Support sustained collaboration, meaningful representation in decisions, and mechanisms through which Black communities can shape organizational priorities.