{"doi":"10.1111/add.15964","title":"Lessons Learned on Addressing Racism: Recommendations from The Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco's Racial Equity Task Force","abstract":"This editorial reviews the recommendations of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco's Racial Equity Task Force on how to address individual and institutional racism within academia in general and within the field of commercial tobacco and nicotine science. In light of increased international awareness of the fatal consequences of racism, in August 2020, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) Board of Directors created the Racial Equity Task Force (RETF). The RETF was charged with identifying problem areas within SRNT and recommending changes that would advance an anti-racist agenda in SRNT and promote racial equity both within SRNT and in the field of nicotine and commercial tobacco research. SRNT, an international scientific society with the majority of members residing within the United States, acknowledges and strives to better understand and intervene on racism, from structural to individual levels, to advance nicotine and commercial tobacco research and reduce unequal tobacco-related harms. Racism exists across the globe and takes different forms depending on the context. Despite this complexity, an important part of this effort is to reflect on SRNT's own policies and practices, to ultimately eliminate all forms of racism from SRNT. To achieve this goal, the RETF engaged in various data collection activities to identify where racial equity-promoting policies, procedures and practices were present or absent within the Society. This included a comprehensive review of the foundational documents that guide SRNT's activities and decision-making and listening sessions with seven key informant groups: SRNT-Europe and SRNT-Oceania Chapter leaders, current leaders from the eight topical Networks, Annual Meeting Program Committee representatives, the Editor-in-Chief of the Society's journal (Nicotine &Tobacco Research), SRNT University leaders and the founders of the SRNT Health Equity Network. Based on this information, the RETF developed recommendations for SRNT to become an anti-racist nicotine and commercial tobacco scientific society; the recommendations were then circulated to all Society members for feedback and then submitted to the Board of Directors. It is important to recognize that structural racism and racial/ethnic bias has been deeply embedded and persists in research [1], including biomedical research, to the point of some researchers being told that ‘health disparities’ research is ‘not science’ [2]. Although these recommendations are specific to SRNT, many of these recommendations have broad relevance to addiction science and academia. The recommendations presented here are not a comprehensive list of specific recommendations from the RETF [3]; rather, they are summaries of task force recommendations. Table 1 summarizes key RETF recommendations related to the structure of SRNT, highlighting the importance of embedding systems that will assess and address issues of racial equity, holding SRNT accountable. Such systemic changes are critical to ensure that SRNT embodies the value of being anti-racist. Table 2 summarizes key RETF recommendations related to nicotine and commercial tobacco science and its dissemination, including ways to increase the visibility of science that addresses health inequity and, importantly, does not exacerbate inequities, and ways to promote diversification, particularly the inclusion of racialized groups in the scientific workforce. Collectively, these recommendations will begin to address the gaps in anti-racist policies and procedures that are common in many institutions as well as research-specific calls for action. RETF recommendations also attempt to acknowledge, address, or mitigate the racist history of commercial tobacco in the United States and globally. Built on racial capitalism, the racist history of commercial tobacco began with colonization adulterating and modifying the sacred Indigenous tobacco plant as a plantation crop for ‘recreational use’ a","journal":"Addiction","year":2022,"id":297536,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9635,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":410927,"name":"Megan E. Piper","orcid":"0000-0002-9876-5460","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":671071,"name":"Raglan Maddox","orcid":"0000-0002-2770-0686","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":788145,"name":"Yessenia Castro","orcid":"0000-0003-0994-908X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":884991,"name":"Josephine T. Hinds","orcid":"0000-0002-5079-8319","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":539730,"name":"Patricia Nez Henderson","orcid":"0000-0002-8087-9929","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":731763,"name":"Hershel Clark","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336193,"name":"Mignonne C. Guy","orcid":"0000-0003-4530-2013","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":304692,"name":"Kelvin Choi","orcid":"0000-0002-6753-2883","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986117,"name":"SRNT's Racial Equity Task Force","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":20,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:26.161109Z","pmid":"35751445","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}