Naming and Framing: Six Principles for Embedding Health Equity Language in Policy Research, Writing, and Practice

Context: Language specificity in research, advocacy, and writing is an important tool to ensure more equitable health policies. All health policy practitioners working at the intersection of health care, health policy, and health equity have a role in upholding ethical standards that promote the use of humanizing, inclusive, and antisupremacist language.

Methods: We conducted an environmental scan and synthesized themes across commonly used and publicly available health equity language guides to provide specific guidance to health policy practitioners to inform their policy research, analysis, writing, and dissemination.

Findings: We identify and describe six guiding principles to dismantle systems that work against the goals of health equity through policy-focused research, writing, and communications. These principles include avoiding blaming language, contextualizing health inequities, acknowledging that systems are not passive, understanding that one-size-fits-all terminology does not exist, seeking input from community members, and paying attention to omissions.

Conclusions: Applying these principles will better equip health policy practitioners to develop or inform equitable policies and meaningfully engage in dialogue with community members to advance equitable health policy.