Inequities in Research and Practice Working Group

The Inequities in ANH Research and Practice Working Group (2021-present) is a new initiative by the ANH community to highlight and address inequities experienced by different disciplines along the research continuum. This is an open space to stimulate discourse on how inequities could be challenged to bring structural changes in the ways that interdisciplinary agriculture, nutrition, and health linkages research is conducted.

The research continuum is the process that begins with the conception of ideas, through to evidence generation, dissemination and ownership, which includes  identifying research aims and priorities, developing grant proposals, establishing research collaborations, securing funding and financial capacity, ethical approvals, data collection, analyses, and sharing, peer review publication, dissemination of research and ownership of data (Figure 1).

We seek to identify best practices and engage in each step of the research continuum. In addition, we aim to provide tools and resources for the ANH Academy network to utilise in their own practices or to leverage in efforts to advocate more broadly for equitable research. It is hoped that this work area will eventually provide a space for inclusive discourse on this topic.

This is an evolving and interactive forum for knowledge sharing that encompasses lessons learned from various career trajectories, institutions, and positionalities. We do this through the following:

1. Summarise current and emerging issues on research inequities in the agriculture, nutrition, health fields, through a systematic scoping review of literature - expected to be published later in 2022. 
2. Organizing webinars, discussions, and blogs that highlight alternative pathways to engage in equitable research. 
3. Conducting research on inequities in agriculture, nutrition and health research practice and identifying solutions that can be adopted by institutions and individuals to make research more equitable. 

Topics of interest: authorship, publishing inequities, unpaid labor, gendered research career roles, decolonizing global nutrition/health/development/economics/climate change, financial capacity building, power and funding imbalances in research settings, dissemination and community participation, and many more….

This is a Working Group in progress. It is in its early phase and will expand in both scope and membership, informed by the scoping review and other activities.

If you are interested in staying up to date on the progress of this group, joining associated activities or contributing your own  ideas or perspectives on how research systems could be improved, please get in touch using the form below. We’d love to hear from you.

Fig 1. Elements of research continuum