Health Centers' Policies: A Closer Look at Hidden Racism

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) aim to boost health equity for communities that have faced discrimination. But do their policies truly fight racism? Often, they don't. This can lead to policies that unintentionally promote racism. To tackle this, we used a method called Critical Anti-Racist Discourse Analysis (CARDA) on an FQHC's operations manual. CARDA helped us spot three ways racism might sneak into policies: 1. Policies say what to do, but not who's in charge. 2. Policies are written in a way that hides who's responsible. 3. Policies don't clearly show who does what. To fight institutional racism, we need to look closely at policies to spot hidden problems. Making clear policies and showing who's responsible can build trust and accountability between health centers and communities.