Summary

Unlike other public health crises, attention to the role of prevention in racial bias has not predominated. Most human actions, including racism, are informed by unconscious thoughts. Behavior-change interventions seek to understand facilitators and barriers to human action and antecedent unconscious thoughts, which are guided not only within an individual but also in interpersonal and societal environments. Current behavioral interventions on implicit and explicit racial bias can identify gaps and opportunities in the literature to evaluate operational definitions of behavior and bias, discuss psychological and neurobiological processes involved in racial bias, that may provide insight into prevention. Furthermore, a focus on public health–based interventions which integrate behavioral science foundations may assist to develop adaptable, accurate, and effective interventions across global communities. Based on the literature results discussed, the benefit for the field of public health may be to inform future studies and create a multilevel, behavioral-based framework to prevent or mitigate racial bias behaviors..