Research

Terms like community engaged research and community-based participatory research risk losing their meaning and significance in health equity research. This article calls attention to potential overuse of such terms in applied health research with historically marginalized populations. Reflecting on essays that advocate for decolonizing research, this article considers ways to engage in research that does not enact epistemicide or the erasure of diverse ways of doing research and knowledge generation, as well as encourages the “deep work” of relationship and trust building. The author argues that research should be an ongoing and reflexive practice that works to dismantle the legacy of colonialism that has dictated, for too long, who does science and research and who generates knowledge.