Why health equity-based research is a priority at Real
By Dr. Onisha Etkins, Ph.D., Maria Garay, M.S., Tolulope Oyetunde, M.S., MPH, Zainab Taymuree, M.S., Real’s Research Team
We talk a lot about the rising rates of mental illness in America — nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, and of the population with a severe mental illness, only 64% receive treatment. We know people are sick, we know few people get access to care, but what we don’t explore enough is — is the care itself effective? Who is it effective for? Who is left out?
At Real, we believe everyone should have access to high quality, affordable, and equitable mental health care. An equitable mental health care system is one that recognizes the gaps in access to quality care and intentionally addresses this disparity while centering those at the margins. However, it takes a lot more than simply saying equity is a goal we strive for. We’re committed at every stage of product development to consider everyone, not just a select few. And most importantly, we want this consideration to translate into impact. Thus, developing a health research team at Real was a priority to not only develop research-based evidence to support our platform and values, but also to build a stronger understanding of how we can work towards a more equitable mental health care system in the U.S..
Why Real invests in health research
The traditional mental health care system in the U.S. is an inaccessible system for many reasons, an important one being the history of oppression, violence, and systemic marginalization of many communities. Specifically, communities of color not only experience negative mental health outcomes due to racism, but also, have a difficult time accessing quality mental health care.
These hurdles stem from systemic issues — we know structural racism leads to less access to resources, such as quality housing, education, and job opportunities, all of which are associated with mental health outcomes. In addition to that, cultural racism can lead to unconscious bias in clinicians that results in psychiatric diagnoses being applied differently based on race.
Mental health outcomes and mental healthcare experiences for communities in the U.S. are not identical. Thus, developing mental health tools and resources that are treated as one-size-fits-all solutions fail to recognize the longstanding history of how differential systems of power in our country shape health and healthcare. We invest in health research to understand how to provide better care for all communities. In doing so, we aim to acknowledge those who have been systemically marginalized within mental health care systems, and better understand what reclaiming agency in their care looks and feels like.
Who is the Real Health Research Team?
While our team of researchers have different backgrounds and areas of expertise, consistent across the team is that all of our researchers explicitly prioritize equity and transformative justice in their research frameworks. Since the beginning of our health research team’s establishment, we operated from a mission and values statement that sow the seed upon which our research will grow:
For the health research team at Real, our vision is to make Real accessible to a broad range of people, with a concerted effort to serve and co-create with communities who have historically faced disproportionate obstacles to accessing dignified mental health care. We are committed to confronting systemic barriers people face when attempting to seek mental health care, whether that’s finding content that’s relevant to your cultural or racial background, or creating an affordable alternative to traditional psychotherapy.
We aim to both hold ourselves accountable to this mission and continue building on it. Our mission speaks to our priorities and how we think through decision processes and goals for our research. For this reason, our team is comprised of researchers who:
- Explicitly acknowledge intersecting systems of power and oppression in their work
- Are more than just researchers, but also actively engaged with their communities
- Partake in radical reimaginings of what research, and more broadly, mental health care, can look and feel like
Real’s vision for health research
In order to truly create an equitable mental health care system, we must reckon with the reality that the traditional mental health care system is oppressive. Part of reimagining mental health care to be more equitable is to center the voices who have been systemically excluded and marginalized. Our research pedagogy is rooted in being anti-oppressive, meaning we strive to always recognize the influence of oppressive systems and create conditions for transformative justice through research.
We hope that everyone invested in transforming mental healthcare will also explicitly consider intersecting systems of power (e.g. racism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobia, capitalism, etc.) in research and at every stage of development in our care models.
So here’s the future of mental health care we’re building: one that is equitable and one that is willing to be challenged and changed. We have more updates in the coming weeks on our most recent clinical study and how our team thinks about conducting equitable research as we strive towards a world where mental health care is effective and high quality for everyone.
