Purpose: This roundtable brings together researchers to move beyond individual-level explanations of health inequalities and adopt an intersectional approach. By emphasizing intersectionality as both a theoretical and methodological framework, this session will explore innovative methods and discuss barriers to their implementation, ensuring research better reflects lived experience. Objectives: To exchange knowledge and ideas about intersectional approaches and opportunities laying groundwork for publication that advances the accessibility and integration of intersectionality in health psychology research: 1. Introduce intersectionality as a foundational theoretical and methodological framework in light of current gaps in research addressing the layered complexities of inequality 2. Explore the reciprocal contributions of health psychology to intersectionality 3. Identify opportunities to adopt intersectional approaches in quantitative/qualitative research and theory and intervention development 4. Stimulate discourse regarding opportunities and challenges in intersectionality, providing the foundation for a collaborative publication inspiring theoretical and methodological engagement with intersectional approaches. Rationale: Health and well-being are shaped by systemic inequities that determine access to health-promoting resources and opportunities. Traditionally, analyses often isolate social characteristics attempting to address this. However, such approaches assume identities exist independently and detached from structural inequalities rather than being shaped by them, obscuring lived experiences and the complexity of (dis)advantage. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality framework highlights interlocking systems of power and privilege that perpetuate inequality, emphasizing the need for methodologies that capture interacting effects on intersectional identities. While intersectionality is widely acknowledged, its application remains underdeveloped. Qualitative research’s emphasis on lived experiences, more easily facilitates intersectional approaches, whereas quantitative methods face statistical complexity in modeling intersecting social identities with sophisticated approaches available, but remaining largely unfamiliar. Given the lack of integration of intersectionality in research, there is a need to promote theoretical advancements, empirical insights, and emerging analytical methods. The roundtable and subsequent publication will provide a critical synthesis of current approaches, highlight key barriers, and offer practical guidance for researchers seeking to embrace intersectionality. Summary: CJ outlines gaps in current approaches addressing inequalities, bridged by CE highlighting empirical find on discrimination that suggest the need for intersectional approaches. KR discusses the need to address within-group heterogeneity in modeling introducing intersectionality as a framework, continued by NBP showcasing applications and quantitative innovations. LW then leads group discussion, shaped by guiding questions regarding intersectional practices and goals. This discussion seeks to explore experiences, ideas, needs, and challenges as well as both immediate opportunities and future collaborations—including directions for a joint publication.
