Health Affairs April 3, 2025
American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Hispanic or Latino, Middle Eastern or North African, multiracial, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, White.
Did you spot the difference? Among the racial and ethnic groups commonly studied in US medical and public health research, only multiracial is left uncapitalized. Style guides for medical and health research adopted by most journals in these fields—including those from the American Medical Association (AMA), American Psychological Association (APA), and (until the recent ideological overhaul of its website) the National Institutes of Health (NIH) —clearly indicate that the names of all racial and ethnic groups should be capitalized (exhibit 1). However, none capitalize multiracial.
The reason for this discrepancy is unclear. APA style explicitly states that multiracial...
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