This panel brings together activists, academics, decision-makers, and representatives of social movements from Latin America to discuss the use, availability, and barriers to collecting race and ethnicity data in national census, health information systems, and vital statistics, and implications for documenting racial/ethnic health inequities in the region. The event marks the release of the data brief “Making the Invisible, Visible: Race, Racism, and Health Data, Lessons from Latin American countries” and the official launch of the newly CIHR-funded PAN-DIASPORA project (Pan-American Data Initiative for the Analysis of Population Racial/Ethnic Health Inequities).

PAN-DIASPORA is a collaborative research initiative designed to examine the availability, quality and scope of data collected and used on racial/ethnic inequities in urban areas in the Pan-American region, including Brazil, Colombia, Canada, and the United States. Using available national census data, health surveys and health surveillance systems and vital statistics registries, and situated within intersectional and structural racism frameworks, the PAN-DIASPORA project will contribute to discussions regarding the use of these data sources for the accurate documentation of racial health inequities, the creation of measures designed to describe the conditions in which marginalized racial/ethnic groups are embedded, and the development of policy action to mitigate and eliminate racial health inequities in the region.

This project is a partnership between the Ubuntu Center on Racism, Global Movements, and Population Health Equity at Drexel University (US), McGill University (Canada), the Institute of Collective Health at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil), the University of Toronto (Canada), the School of Government at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), Johns Hopkins University (US), Pedro Kouri Institute (Cuba), and the SALURBAL Project at the Urban Health Collaborative at Drexel University (US).