155 Racism in German healthcare: findings from a CBPR study with black and/or Muslim healthcare users

Abstract PTH 1: Determinants of Health Disease and Interventions 1, B307 (FCSH), September 3, 2025, 14:30 - 15:30 While the impact of racism on healthcare interactions has been researched extensively in many parts of the world, substantive studies on healthcare-related racism in Germany remain scarce. Our study applies Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and aims to explore healthcare users’ experiences of racism within German healthcare. Community members were trained as peer researchers and given support as they conducted six focus groups involving 14 healthcare users who are Black and/or (perceived or self-describing as) Muslim. A democratic approach to qualitative data analysis was applied in the form of the DEPICT model. The data analysis developed iteratively, with inductive and deductive steps complementing one another. The collaboratively developed analytical framework, which seeks to address dynamics of being seen and treated as “other” and being made inaudible, contributes to an empirically grounded conceptual understanding of healthcare users’ experiences of racism, and help to illumine the mechanisms of subtle racism, which, as study results suggest, can damage healthcare users and cause a loss of trust in the system. Suggestions are made for antiracist policies, which move beyond cultural competence approaches and address racial inequities in healthcare institutions. The study results are visualized by applying art-based methods to ensure diverse modes of knowledge dissemination. The application of CBPR and, particularly, the engagement of racialized healthcare users in the research process offered pathways for analyzing the subtle, otherwise hard-to-detect mechanisms of racism, andfor learning from the wisdom of situated knowledges.