Black Nativity and Health Disparities: A Research Paradigm for Understanding the Social Determinants of Health

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

please see the attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

First, the Authors would like to thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. We greatly appreciate that you found the study valuable.

Your review offered two points of criticism/clarification. First, you wondered why we did not include immigrants from Latin America. We did not target this group in our analysis because there is continued debate about whether people with proximal ancestry in Latin America constitute their own racial group or if they constitute an ethnic group that includes different racial categories. Given that this debate is still unsettled, we do not include studies that include ‘Black’ migrants from Latin America. That said, people from these sending countries are likely included in the studies that we reviewed (even if unmarked). Here are some arguments for considering people that identify as Hispanic/Latinx as members to a racial group:

Roth, Wendy. 2012. Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2003.

Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Aranda, Elizabeth M. 2006.

Emotional Bridges to Puerto Rico: Migration, Return Migration, and the Struggles of Incorporation. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Little-field Publishers.

We also included the following text to the manuscript to make our thought process more clear:

“That is, we continue to debate whether people with proximal ancestry in Latin America constitute their own racial group or an ethnic group that includes different racial categories. Given that this debate remains unsettled, we do not include studies that include ‘Black’ migrants from Latin America. (Roth, Wendy. 2012. Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Grosfoguel, Ramón. 2003. Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Aranda, Elizabeth M. 2006.)”

We included the full citations in our revisions so that the editorial staff can include the full citations in the references section of the  revised version of the manuscript.

You also wanted more clarification about the role of American slavery in understanding health differences in these populations. We acknowledge that many immigrants are coming from countries with their own histories of slavery and colonialism. However, while foreign-born Blacks often hail from countries with histories of slavery and colonialism, foreign-born Blacks might experience or read anti-Black and/or racialized experiences in the United States as existing outside of or unrelated to histories of slavery and colonialism in their sending countries, resulting in a different level or kind of ‘dose response.’ This might allow them to have a different relationship to experiences with racialized forms of discriminaiton that they view to be outside the scope of their ancestral history.

We also added the following text to the manuscript:

“While foreign-born Blacks often hail from countries with histories of slavery and colonialism, foreign-born Blacks might experience or read anti-Black and/or racialized experiences in the United States as existing outside of or unrelated to histories of slavery and colonialism in their sending countries, resulting in a different level or kind of ‘dose response.’”

Thanks again for your helpful insights!

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well-written study on Black nativity and health disparities. My main criticism is that this study is listed as a SYSTEMATIC review but it is a narrative review. It does not follow the PRISMA guidelines. While a narrative review is okay, systematic reviews provide a much higher line of evidence.

In addition, the study is quite unstructured. It does not follow the typical IMRAD structure and mixes methods and discussion. For example, the results of the literature review are listed in the methods section; there is no results section.

Table 1 is also presented in the methods section, but it is a result. This table is also way too long and should be moved to the end of the paper or as an appendix.

I think the authors did a good job in using bias-free language. They can check the APA guide for inclusive language to be sure. 

Author Response

First, the Authors would like to thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. We greatly appreciate that you found the substance of the study valuable.

Your review offered two points of criticism/clarification. We appreciate your concerns about formatting and whether our paper constitutes a formal systematic review. With respect to formatting, we have requested that the editorial staff move Table 1 to either the results section or to an appendix. We have also made some edits to format the manuscript in the more traditional IMRAD format. More specifically, we changed the section called “Materials and Methods” to “Methods” and we added a header for a section on “Results.” The manuscript already included sections for “Introduction” and “Discussion.”

We understand that we did not use more traditional practices for developing our review. We communicated our approach to the editorial staff before submitting the review and they decided to accept it as a submission under the category “systematic review.” We also would like to highlight that we do not describe our review as “systematic” in the body of the text.

Thanks again for your helpful insights!