The framework underpins a global health study examining how community mobilization in made-marginalized places sought to influence policymaking toward health equity and social justice during the pandemic.

The project brings together collaborators in two Global South countries, Brazil and Peru, and two Global North countries, Canada and Germany.

Rather than treating communities as sources of data to be extracted and analyzed elsewhere, the approach centers dialogue between researchers and community actors as the core of the research process.

The study aims both to understand community actions and organizing and to preserve the memories of made-marginalized people and places during the crisis.

The framework draws on principles of non-extractivism and Freirean action research. The authors describe their work as aspirationally named, using analytic narration to explore what global health research anchored in an ethical dialogic praxis could look like in practice.

Notably, the team chose not to emphasize research results in this account. Instead, the essay relays the group’s experiences of countering dominant, asymmetrical approaches to global health research, both in theory and in practice.

This stance rests on a shared belief that community engagement is central to societal transformation. By documenting how the transnational collaboration was carried out, the authors offer an in-depth account of the possibilities of conducting global health research that treats community partners as co-producers of knowledge rather than subjects of study.

Subject of Research: Dialogical, non-extractivist research methods for studying community mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic

Article Title: Community mobilization and policy demands in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: A transnational dialogic non-extractive research approach

Article References: Iguiñiz-Romero, R., Pereira, P. L. N., Falge, C., Mayell, S., Fauvel, M., Martens, T., Farias, L. W., Diaz Gomez, L., Trivellato, P., Satzinger, F., Ventura, D. D. F. L., Knipper, M., Monnais, L., & Birn, A.-E. (2026). Community mobilization and policy demands in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: A transnational dialogic non-extractive research approach. PLOS Global Public Health, 6(10), e0006384. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0006384

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0006384

Keywords: COVID-19, global health, community mobilization, non-extractivism, Freirean action research, health equity, Brazil, Peru, Canada, Germany, research methodology, social justice

Researchers at Ulm University conducted 26 semi-structured exploratory interviews with 14 military and 12 civilian physicians who had worked during the pandemic. Participants were recruited through anesthesiology, surgery and internal-medicine departments, including all five German military hospitals, maximum-provider hospitals, trauma centers and regional hospitals in several federal states. The sample included 11 women and 15 men. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and anonymized, then examined through structured qualitative content analysis with MAXQDA. The researchers reduced the transcripts to core elements, grouped them into main topics and subtopics, and coded them using the software. The authors described the study as the first empirical investigation of its kind to compare the ethical assessments of German military and civilian physicians, while emphasizing that a small, purposively selected sample is intended to illuminate subjective perspectives rather than produce population-level estimates.

The physicians identified major differences among the three settings used in the interviews: battlefield triage, mass-casualty incidents and pandemics. Military triage typically occurs over a short period, amid combat, with severely limited personnel, transport and material resources; the injury patterns listed in the study included ballistic trauma, amputations and critical bleeding. Mass-casualty triage also produces a sudden influx, but in a more developed infrastructure, with injury patterns determined by the event, such as trauma and critical bleeding from traffic accidents, natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Pandemic triage differs fundamentally because demand accumulates over weeks or months. Capacity can deteriorate progressively as patients occupy beds, equipment and personnel for extended periods, and the number of patients requiring triage is difficult to assess at the outset. Military and civilian doctors alike regarded triage as a tool for moving from chaos toward an ordered allocation process, but they cautioned that each event has its own timing, threat profile and resource constraints.

Preclinical triage and clinical triage were also distinguished. The former is primarily a screening process intended to identify treatment priority, especially in military or mass-casualty settings. The latter occurs inside the healthcare system, as in a pandemic, and concerns the prioritization of active treatment, including intensive care. Preclinical conditions usually make meaningful consent and communication impossible or extremely limited. Clinical triage offers more opportunity to speak with patients or relatives, establish trust and determine a patient’s wishes, including through advance directives, but those conversations may still be constrained by fear that treatment will be withheld. Across both forms, the physicians said, triage prevents the usual individual medical “gold standard” from being applied without limit. A “silver standard” is accepted instead: the best treatment that can be provided given the resources and circumstances.

Autonomy was the ethical principle most clearly restricted. In battlefield triage and mass-casualty screening, the interviewees said, physicians may have to decide without fully informed consent because time, safety and scarcity make interaction impossible. They described this as a deliberate transfer of decision-making authority to medical professionals, based partly on an assumption that patients generally wish to survive and receive care. The constraint became stronger as resources became scarcer. In clinical triage, patients retain more ability to refuse care, and physicians may consult them or relatives, but resource decisions remain predominantly medical. One civilian physician characterized the situation as one in which individualized medicine and fully autonomous decision-making cease to function in their usual form, while a military physician said that the decisive factor is the physician’s assessment of whether a patient has a better chance of survival.

Beneficence and nonmaleficence were likewise redefined around collective outcomes. Physicians described triage decisions as among the hardest in modern medicine because clinicians carry responsibility both to the patient before them and to all patients competing for care. The duty of care, they argued, requires careful prognostic assessment rather than casual rationing, but the aim is to rescue as many people as possible rather than guarantee the optimal outcome for every individual. Material and personnel shortages may mean that a patient receives less than maximum treatment, and some harm to that person is accepted to create greater benefit for the patient group. Honest communication was considered essential to preserving trust, especially where resource reallocation may threaten an individual’s treatment. Nevertheless, the interviewees judged paternalistic, pragmatic decisions to be unavoidable during existential crises when the normal standard of informed consent cannot operate.

Social justice emerged as the overriding principle, with survival probability, medical urgency and expected benefit replacing social characteristics such as wealth or status. The physicians argued that treating equal cases alike does not necessarily mean identical treatment, because patients differ in comorbidity, injury and prognosis. Fairness requires an individual medical assessment rather than a lottery or a first-come, first-served rule. In their view, a random or queue-based system ignores clinical knowledge and can produce worse collective outcomes. A mixed utilitarian approach became visible in their accounts: patients with urgent need, a reasonable chance of recovery and a favorable balance between resource use and expected benefit were favored. The objective was neither to reward the most socially valuable person nor merely to preserve the patient already receiving care, but to maximize clinically meaningful benefit and the number of survivors.

All 26 participants considered ex-post triage—reallocating intensive-care resources by discontinuing treatment for one patient so another can receive them—ethically feasible in an absolute allocation crisis. They rejected a common interpretation in which two patients are treated as direct competitors and survival probabilities are simply compared. Instead, ex-post triage requires repeated, individual reassessment of each patient’s course, prognosis, resource availability and competing demand. The clinicians argued that limiting treatment only to those admitted first would give earlier arrivals an automatic entitlement to care and exclude future patients from the same medical assessment. One civil physician said such a process would require a well-structured written procedure and potentially several specialists, especially for complex cases. These views were theoretical in Germany’s pandemic context: no clinical triage involving treatment discontinuation occurred there during COVID-19, so the interviewees had not tested this reasoning through direct experience with ex-post decisions.

The findings also carry substantial legal and ethical limits. Germany’s federal “Triage Act,” which entered into force on 14 December 2022, expressly prohibited ex-post triage. On 23 September 2025, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the federal provision void, ruling that the national legislature lacked competence to regulate triage and that any legislation would have to come from the federal states; the court did not declare ex-post triage either constitutionally required or permitted. The interviews were conducted before that ruling, and the study did not test the physicians’ views against a settled legal framework. Response bias is also possible because participating physicians may have been unusually interested in triage, while interviews conducted in person, by telephone or through a secure video platform could have altered responses. The findings are exploratory, geographically restricted to Germany and descriptive of a 26-person sample, so they should not be generalized to all military or civilian doctors or treated as evidence that particular triage rules improve clinical outcomes.

What the study does establish is a shared practical ethic among the doctors interviewed. Whether working in military or civilian hospitals, they viewed triage not as ordinary bedside decision-making but as a collective obligation triggered by exceptional scarcity. Their reasoning combined a utilitarian aim of maximizing survivors with a commitment to objective medical criteria, individual prognosis and careful communication whenever possible. They accepted restrictions on autonomy, some individual harm and even withdrawal of ongoing treatment as components of what they called a silver standard of care. The same interview corpus also exposes the moral cost of that position: medicine is being asked to manage an unequal and under-resourced system, make decisions that can determine survival, and place a collective patient before an individual one. It is a consequential vision of triage, but the qualitative evidence describes how a small group of German physicians reasoned about that vision rather than proving that the decisions they advocated are the best available in every setting.

Subject of Research: Qualitative study of German physicians’ ethical reasoning about military, mass-casualty and pandemic triage.

Article Title: Ethical aspects of triage in civil and military contexts: a qualitative research of physicians’ attitudes and knowledge regarding ethics in triage scenarios in

Article References: Seelig, J., Orzechowski, M., & Steger, F. (2026). Ethical aspects of triage in civil and military contexts: a qualitative research of physicians’ attitudes and knowledge regarding ethics in triage scenarios in. Frontiers in Medicine, 13, Article 1938455. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2026.1938455

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2026.1938455

Keywords: medical triage, resource allocation, clinical ethics, military medicine, pandemic triage, patient autonomy, social justice, ex-post triage, mass-casualty incidents, COVID-19, Ethical, aspects

The scale of the underlying evidence base is striking. Following the PRISMA reporting standard, the researchers searched nine academic databases in March 2026, including Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, and African Journals OnLine, using 70 keyword combinations that paired physical education terms such as school sport and physical education teacher training with exposure terms including racism, anti-racism, critical whiteness, and critical race theory. The search surfaced 3,346 publications, of which 56 met five inclusion criteria covering peer review, language, study population, and thematic focus. Twenty-three of those publications centered specifically on the perspectives of practicing physical education teachers and physical education teacher education students, and it is this subset that formed the analytical core of the review. Seventeen of the 23 studies were qualitative, one was quantitative, one used mixed methods, and four were theoretical or conceptual contributions.

Methodologically, the review was unusually transparent about its own construction. Each empirical study was quality-assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist for qualitative work and the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool for quantitative and mixed-methods research, with two authors scoring independently and reconciling disagreements by consensus. Most empirical studies were rated high quality. The team then applied a hybrid analytic strategy: template analysis, a codebook-driven form of thematic analysis, was used for descriptive themes, while reflexive thematic analysis in the tradition of Braun and Clarke guided the more interpretive themes. Consistent with the epistemology of Critical Race Theory, the authors explicitly documented their own positionality—the first and last authors identify as white men, the second and third as Black women—and described how their Black female colleagues challenged their white colleagues’ assumptions throughout the process. This reflexive architecture matters, because the review’s central argument is that no analysis of racism escapes the racial position of the analyst.

Four themes emerged from the coding process, and the first concerns how racism is understood in the first place. Rather than converging on a shared definition, the reviewed studies deploy a fractured vocabulary: Critical Race Theory, Critical Whiteness Studies, colorblindness, structural racism, the racialized other, biological racism, and gendered racism all appear, often within the same body of literature. Whiteness figures prominently in eleven of the 23 publications. In this framework, whiteness is not simply an attribute of white individuals but a racial discourse that structures a hierarchy of embodied capital and rights, deciding whose movement styles, bodies, and sporting knowledge count as normal and whose are read as deficient. The review also found that these conceptual choices track geography and authorship: the eight United States-based studies, for example, differed markedly depending on whether first authors identified as scholars of color, with approaches ranging from colorblindness frameworks to gendered racism.

The second theme documents the lived experiences of teachers and trainees, and here the picture is bleak. Marginalized physical education teacher education students reported stereotypes, exclusion, everyday racism, and microaggressions in every study that addressed their experiences, supporting Critical Race Theory’s core claim that racism is endemic in predominantly white educational systems. Navigating white-dominated institutions demands substantial emotional labor and strategic self-presentation—burdens the review notes were never described for white students. Institutional machinery often compounds the harm. One participant quoted in the review described feeling uncomfortable after racialized comments but did not even know whom to report them to. A 2025 study found that Black and Latine pre-service teachers faced material gatekeeping in the form of licensure exams costing roughly 90 dollars per attempt, with no institutional financial support, illustrating how classism and ableism intersect with race to filter who enters the profession at all.

Intersectionality runs through the findings like a structural beam. Female teachers of color described sexism intensified by racism, with their bodies and competencies scrutinized in ways their white colleagues rarely experienced. The review cites a Norwegian study in which teachers perceived the movements and bodies of female students of color as deficient and out of place, and interview data from Germany in which racialized and gendered perception patterns converged in teachers’ talk about students from refugee backgrounds. Even educators who explicitly championed inclusion were shown to carry unconscious stereotypes: one frequently cited study of white physical educators, titled after a participant’s declaration that she treats everyone the same, found that negative stereotypes about racialized others were woven into teachers’ self-descriptions despite their egalitarian intentions. Only one study, a quantitative survey from Spain, reported broadly positive attitudes among trainee teachers toward diversity—a stark outlier against the qualitative record.

The third theme, unveiling whiteness, is perhaps the review’s most consequential. Sixteen of the 23 publications describe whiteness as a system of norms governing physical education across Western countries. The profession’s demographic composition is itself a signal: most physical education educators are white, often teaching dramatically more diverse student populations, and leadership roles skew toward young white men. This overrepresentation creates what the authors call a feedback loop, in which white normativity reinforces exclusion, restricts mentorship for students and teachers of color, and ultimately impoverishes learning for everyone by narrowing the range of perspectives, teaching methods, and cultural knowledge in the gym. The critique extends to knowledge production itself. Among the studies reporting first-author racial positionality, white first authors predominated, and the review’s authors—including its own white male lead—interrogate why white scholars so often hold the access and resources to narrate the experiences of marginalized students, echoing calls for research grounded in the communities most affected.

The final theme addresses what can be done, and the evidence here is sobering but not hopeless. Multiple studies criticized the absence of any dedicated course on race in physical education teacher education curricula. Yet pilot interventions suggest structured reflection can work: as far back as 1990, a two-semester equity-focused course led one participant to admit, I have become aware that I am racist to some extent. Service-learning interventions combining coursework, teaching practice in multiethnic schools, and reflective journals helped trainees deconstruct stereotypes, though authors cautioned that single-semester experiences cannot overcome a lifetime of socialized beliefs, and one study found no evidence of lasting impact from a short course. The review argues that the scarcity of anti-racist training reflects institutional resistance to confronting whiteness itself, and points toward culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies as a promising framework, alongside global strategies adapted to local contexts.

The review’s limitations are candidly stated. It was restricted to English and German publications, focused on specific databases and keywords, and drew predominantly on qualitative studies from English-speaking countries, leaving a scarcity of large-scale quantitative surveys. The themes were initially developed from a white male perspective, a bias the authors attempted to mitigate through critical reflection within the team. Still, the conclusions are pointed: institutions and journals should support scholars from racially minoritized groups through inclusive funding, collaboration, and mentorship, and teacher training must equip educators—especially white educators—to examine bias, reflect on their racial identity, and challenge norms of whiteness. For a field that aspires to build tolerance through movement, the message is uncomfortable but clear: the path to an anti-racist physical education begins not with fixing racialized students, but with turning the analytical lens on the invisible whiteness of the gym itself.

Subject of Research: Racism and anti-racism in physical education from the perspectives of teachers and physical education teacher education students

Article Title: Whiteness and (anti-) racism in physical education considering teachers’ and physical education teacher education students’ perspectives: a systematic review

Article References: Abel, L., Galle, A. C., Ojo, I., & Vogt, T. (2026). Whiteness and (anti-) racism in physical education considering teachers’ and physical education teacher education students’ perspectives: a systematic review. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 8, Article 1903712. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2026.1903712

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fspor.2026.1903712

Keywords: physical education, racism, anti-racism, whiteness, critical race theory, teacher education, systematic review, microaggressions, intersectionality, PETE, social justice, pedagogy

The research, led by Sipho Sibanda of the University of Western Australia and the University of Pretoria, together with Poppy Masinga, Lekopo Alinah Lelope, and Francis Lynch, focused on Atteridgeville, a township roughly 12 kilometres west of Pretoria. Established in 1939 under apartheid spatial planning, Atteridgeville is home to approximately 64,425 people and reflects many of the social and economic pressures typical of South African urban settlements, including unemployment, crime, and strained public services. In recent years, it has also experienced recurring xenophobic incidents targeting foreign nationals, particularly those operating small businesses, with episodes frequently involving looting and physical violence.

The scale of the broader problem is sobering. According to the Xenowatch database cited in the study, between 1994 and March 2024 xenophobic incidents in South Africa reportedly resulted in 669 deaths, more than 5,310 looted businesses, and 127,572 displacements. The researchers frame these outcomes using Nancy Fraser’s multidimensional theory of social justice, which distinguishes economic maldistribution, cultural misrecognition, political misrepresentation, and misframing of the boundaries of justice. Xenophobic violence, the authors argue, embodies all of these injustices simultaneously: livelihoods are destroyed, refugees are dehumanised through derogatory labels, and their voices are excluded from political discourse that increasingly blames foreigners for the country’s socio-economic difficulties.

To understand the psychological roots of this hostility, the study also draws on Social Identity Theory, which holds that people derive self-worth from group membership and tend to favour their in-group while discriminating against outsiders. In the South African context, citizens are often positioned as a unified national in-group while migrants are cast as out-groups competing for scarce jobs, housing, and services. The researchers complement this psychosocial lens with a human rights-based approach, which treats refugees as rights-holders and host states as duty-bearers responsible for protecting fundamental rights regardless of nationality. Together, these frameworks illuminate both the structural and the interpersonal dynamics that make refugee entrepreneurs especially vulnerable.

Methodologically, the study employed a qualitative, exploratory design. Because no reliable records exist of refugee entrepreneurs in Atteridgeville, the researchers used snowball sampling, recruiting participants through existing social networks until data saturation was reached after ten in-depth interviews. All participants were men, averaging 38 years of age, who had lived in South Africa for an average of seven years. Five came from Ethiopia, two from Nigeria, two from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and one from Burundi. Every participant operated a spaza shop, the informal convenience stores whose name derives from an isiZulu word meaning hidden, reflecting their emergence during apartheid when formal economic participation for Black entrepreneurs was severely restricted. Data were collected between November 2018 and February 2019 through semi-structured, face-to-face interviews of roughly one hour each, conducted at participants’ business premises and analysed thematically following Creswell’s systematic approach to qualitative inquiry.

The findings paint a grim picture of the physical toll of xenophobic violence. Several participants reported being assaulted and injured during attacks on their shops. One described being beaten while perpetrators emptied his store of goods, clothing, and money, leaving him with nothing. Another recounted how looters broke his leg when he tried to stop them from stealing his stock, an injury that still prevents him from walking properly. These accounts align with documented patterns of extreme violence during xenophobic outbreaks elsewhere in South Africa, and the authors interpret them as evidence that such attacks extend beyond economic motives into deeper processes of dehumanisation and misrecognition within host communities.

The emotional consequences proved equally severe. Participants described lasting psychological distress, with some experiencing trauma so profound that they perceived death as an escape. One participant said he sometimes wished someone would stab him so he could die, while another described contemplating self-harm before his faith deterred him. The researchers note that these responses are consistent with wider evidence of elevated anxiety, depression, and trauma among migrants affected by xenophobic violence, and that prolonged exposure to such stressors has been associated with more serious conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder. Importantly, the psychological damage extends to family members, particularly children, who may experience secondary trauma and disruption to their education.

The study also documents how violence destabilises family structures. Several participants reported that their relatives left South Africa because of safety fears or because business losses made it impossible to support them. One man explained that his family returned to their home country after his shop was broken into and he could no longer pay rent, while another described being unable to afford food, school fees, or transport for his children after losing his enterprise. The authors characterise this as a compound vulnerability, in which economic shocks translate directly into broader social and familial instability, echoing earlier research showing that xenophobic attacks can drive affected families into destitution and dependence on external support.

Economically, the destruction was often total. Participants reported repeated break-ins, looting, and vandalism, with some losing their businesses multiple times. One entrepreneur who invested 50,000 rand in his shop now works for a salary of 2,000 rand, while another who previously earned a monthly profit of 5,000 rand after expenses survives on 300 rand per week from an employer. Those who managed to rebuild often did so by selling land in their countries of origin or relying on co-national networks for employment and shared resources. The authors observe that this reliance on informal social capital demonstrates remarkable resilience, but that such coping mechanisms are limited in scope and cannot address the structural conditions underpinning vulnerability. Many participants reported rebuilding their lives without meaningful state intervention, reinforcing concerns about the inadequacy of institutional responses.

Notably, the findings are not uniformly bleak. One participant emphasised that not all South Africans display xenophobic attitudes, describing kind and loving people whose support enabled his survival. The researchers argue that such solidarity, alongside assistance from faith-based organisations and community members, shows that hostility is not universal, though existing support remains fragmented and insufficient. The study recommends integrated psychotherapeutic, material, and financial assistance for affected refugees, including post-incident help desks, community support groups, and joint business forums bringing together local and refugee entrepreneurs. At the macro level, it calls for coordinated, evidence-based strategies, public education campaigns, and stronger legal protections to prevent future violence. The authors also acknowledge limitations, including the small, all-male, single-township sample, and urge future research with mixed methods and gender-diverse samples. As vigilante movements such as Operation Dudula continue to normalise exclusionary rhetoric, the study stands as a reminder that xenophobia is not only a human rights crisis but also an economic one, undermining the township economies, national development goals, and the African ethic of Ubuntu that the country’s constitution aspires to embody.

Subject of Research: The socio-economic effects of xenophobic attacks on refugee entrepreneurs in South Africa

Article Title: A qualitative enquiry into the socio-economic effects of xenophobic attacks on refugee entrepreneurs in South Africa

Article References: Sibanda, S., Masinga, P., Lelope, L. A., & Lynch, F. (2026). A qualitative enquiry into the socio-economic effects of xenophobic attacks on refugee entrepreneurs in South Africa. SN Social Sciences, 6(10), Article 504. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-026-01806-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43545-026-01806-w

Keywords: xenophobia, refugee entrepreneurs, South Africa, spaza shops, Atteridgeville, social identity theory, human rights, qualitative research, informal economy, psychological trauma, social justice, migration