Anti-Racism Methods for Big Data Research: Lessons Learned from the HIV Testing, Linkage, & Retention in Care (HIV TLR) Study.

Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) contributes three functional elements to health equity studies: a race conscious orientation; an antiracism lexicon based on Critical Race Theory (CRT); and an integrated, reflexive approach. Few big data studies employ all three functional elements. Therefore, this article describes the application of PHCRP to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Testing, Linkage and Retention in care (HIV TLR) study (N=3,476,741), which connects multiple large datasets to electronic medical records to examine contextual determinants of racial/ethnic disparities in HIV care continuum outcomes in southern California. As HIV TLR demonstrates, PHCRP's innovative tools and strategies help big data research maintain fidelity to CRT.