What if I told you that one of the most pressing issues affecting Black people today isn’t about individual experiences, but collective realities?
Mental health challenges in the Black community often go unaddressed. This is because of stigma, limited access to inclusive and culturally relevant resources, and many logistical barriers that disproportionately impact people from underserved and underprivileged communities. In public health and research, there’s a persistent notion that Black individuals are either disinterested or ‘hard to reach.’ But is that assertion actually based on evidence?
In 2022, academic clinical psychologists, Drs. Priscilla Lui and Kevin King at The University of Washington, Ernest Jouriles at Southern Methodist University, along with their consultants, Drs. LaTrice Montgomery and Devin Banks launched the Black Adult Resilience study (BARS), a project in both Seattle-Tacoma, WA, and Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, that strives to understand how Black young adults navigate stress and use alcohol and cannabis. This project grew from the Principal Investigator’s, Dr. Lui’s, years of research and clinical expertise related to substance use and mental health in communities of color.
Challenging the ‘hard to reach’ notion, participants in the Seattle-Tacoma region traveled on average 30 miles to participate in the study, often farther than they commute for work. Not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s because this research is about them. And when Black adults see their lives, their struggles, and their communities reflected in research, they show up.
This study is structured with intentional care. The Community Advisory Board (CAB) is a group of community members and professionals who serve as a sounding board throughout the research process. They guide key aspects of the study by offering input on outreach strategies, participant retention, or ways to ensure participants feel respected and supported when engaging with researchers.
Drew Sylva, CAB member and sociologist, frames this work in a broader societal context. He says that “racialization exists along countless axes,” and that within the United States, there’s an “illusion of distance from the realities of racism, as overt racism did not end with segregation. Black Americans, he emphasizes, remain in the ongoing “fight for dignity.” Most importantly, Sylva notes that the BARS team pilots a “broader initiative that (1) provides language to report what many Black Americans understand through lived experiences as racialized people and (2) reports these realities to inform strategies on interpersonal, communal and large-scale institution levels.”
Many other studies like these do not center the Black experience. As Nia Jones, the Research Coordinator at the Seattle-Tacoma study site, notes, “Black health isn’t just the absence of illness, but the presence of thriving networks, cultural identity, and protective factors. BARS takes a different approach to research.” CAB member Ada Ugokwoli further emphasizes how BARS reframes coping mechanisms through a resilience-based lens. In a world where stress from racialized experiences is often minimized, “BARS doesn’t frame coping behaviors in a judgmental way,” says Ugokwoli.
The implications are critical. While Black people make up about 14% of the US population, they account for only 9% of clinical trial participants (National Institute of Mental Health). BARS directly addresses this gap by not just measuring discrimination, but by making an effort to understand their cultural identity and resilience from a culturally-informed lens.
One of BARS’s recent contributions is insight into the roles of environmental influences on stress, coping, and substance use. By using geospatial data, the BARS research team mapped participants’ survey responses with their local environments. This type of analysis is critical; Seattle-Tacoma’s Black community has been shaped by decades of displacement, resource clustering, and unequal neighborhood investment.
“Many of our participants lived in areas with higher rates of poverty and were geographically distant from culturally grounded community supports. By pairing participants’ survey responses with their geographic context, we were able to visualize how place and space shape daily experiences, support systems, and stressors,” says Jones.
So then, how can we best uplift the well-being of Black Americans?
Community. The BARS Team recognized that “being physically closer to culturally affirming spaces and supportive community networks was associated with stronger feelings of belonging and stronger support systems, especially in the face of racial discrimination.” The composition of the research team itself is intentional and speaks to their research findings. Out of 24 research assistants trained on the project
in the Seattle-Tacoma study site so far, 75% reported as Black or of African descent. This representation helps build trust with community members and brings in diverse perspectives that reflect the Black community. Most importantly, BARS research assistants are training to be future psychological and medical healthcare workers, scientists, and other professionals making positive changes in the world. This is the kind of work that truly matters.
BARs’ CAB team comprises psychological researchers, mental health specialists, healthcare workers, and sociologists. Sylva notes, “These diverse backgrounds shape how people experience being alive. The intersectionality of these perspectives is crucial to how we see and perceive one another and understand the world around us.”
Ugokwoli recognizes that both researchers and community members bring distinct, yet equally valuable perspectives. By sharing these ideas, Ugokwoli notes, “research becomes more ethical, accurate, and can be translated into effective community outcomes.”
As a member of the CAB team myself, with a background in journalism, I contribute to this collaborative effort through the writing of this article. Translating research outcomes into an accessible community piece is deeply meaningful to me. Doing so requires us to draw on people of all backgrounds. As Sylva notes, “any effort to document the human experience inevitably ends up integrating multiple facets of expression. In this case, vast multifaceted collaboration is essential to meaningful work.”
Jones reflects on why this work matters. “I work with BARS because of my love for the Black community in Seattle. I was born and raised in Seattle, and the Black community has always seemed small and dispersed. By working with BARS, I had this idea to help not only contribute to research, but also strengthen the Black community by understanding the community I’ve been a part of for so long.” Through local events and partnerships with community organizations, Jones has discovered pieces of her own
community she didn’t know before, deepening her interest in research and collective engagement. In a car-centric city like Seattle, culturally grounded spaces often require distance and travel. Here, community becomes no longer just social, but rather spatial. Moving forward, BARS is truly committed to tangible change, with plans to continue strengthening community partnerships with community organizations and co-develop solutions rooted in community needs.
Learn more about or get involved with BARS by checking out the website or on Instagram.
By Alexis Martin (she/her)
If you haven’t yet had the opportunity, make sure to order a copy of Elmer Dixon’s powerful memoir DIE STANDING: From Black Panther Revolutionary to Global Diversity Consultant and check out what others have been saying about Elmer and his story.
Check out these other opportunities to see what folks are saying about Elmer and his continued work.
- See Elmer speak at Stories from the Revolutions’ Front Lines at his keynote at TEDxUTulsa
- Listen to Elmer talk on NPR’s The Jefferson Exchange
- Read about Elmer’s story in a piece featured in The Seattle Times
- Listen to Elmer on The Medium