Internalised racism (IR) is broadly defined as the acceptance of negative racial stereotypes, beliefs and attitudes about one’s own racial or ethnic group. IR is increasingly recognised as a critical component and consequence of racial stress and trauma. Although IR has been linked to a variety of adverse mental and physical health outcomes, the phenomenon remains under-represented in intervention research. This scoping review addresses this gap by systematically mapping the range of interventions and intervention components that explicitly target IR among racially or ethnically minoritised communities and their health-related outcomes. This protocol paper will describe the process of the scoping review.
This review will follow methodology from the Joanna Briggs Institute and report using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. Using identified controlled vocabulary and keywords, searches will be undertaken using the following databases: MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Embase and Web of Science. This review will include studies describing any intervention or intervention component designed to reduce IR that is conducted with racially or ethnically minoritised populations in any context or setting. No date limit will be applied, and the study must be available in English. Conceptual or opinion pieces without a clear intervention framework will be excluded. Two reviewers will independently screen and select sources and extract data on intervention characteristics, theoretical underpinnings, outcomes and implementation details. Descriptive statistics will summarise study characteristics and outcomes, while a narrative synthesis will explore how interventions conceptualise and address IR. The findings will map existing approaches, highlight research gaps and inform future clinical practice and intervention development.
As this review uses published and publicly available data, no ethical approval is required. The findings will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed publication, conference presentations and briefs to stakeholder networks.
This protocol is registered on the Open Science Framework (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/4VDBX).