This issue features a collection of articles under the umbrella of “HIV, Substance Use, and Trauma: Mentoring to Dismantle Structural  Racism. [APHJ]

”Historically, most research on racial discrimination and trauma and HIV and substance use has examined these issues primarily as individual-level processes. Echoing themes from Krieger’s eco-social  theory (https://bit.ly/3MC6vIk), the articles in this collection seek to advance knowledge about how structural racism and intergenerational trauma are embodied for racialized US communities, resulting in disproportionate rates of HIV and substance abuse .Leveraging theoretical and empirical insights from the intergenerational trauma and structural racism literature, this collection seeks to contextualize racialized health inequities and pinpoint opportunities for multi-level (i.e., individual, community, and structural) intervention. These structural racism and intergenerational trauma contexts are vital because, as Resmaa Menakemwrites in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies(Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery; 2017),

Many African Americans know trauma intimately—from their own nervous systems, from the experiences of people they love, and most often, from both. But African Americans are not alone in this. A different but equally real form or racialized trauma lives in the bodies of most white Americans. And a third, often deeply toxic type of racialized trauma lives and breathes in the bodies of many of America’s law enforcement officers. All three types of trauma are routinely passed on from person to person and from generation to generation. (p. 9)

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