This article describes lessons learned from the incorporation of language justice as an antiracism praxis for an academic Center addressing cardiometabolic inequities. Drawing from a thematic analysis of notes and discussions from the Center’s community engagement core, we present lessons learned from three examples of language justice: inclusion of bilingual team members, community mini-grants, and centering community in community-academic meetings. Facilitating strategies included preparing and reviewing materials in advance for interpretation/translation, live simultaneous interpretation for bilingual spaces, and in-language documents. Barriers included: time commitment and expenses, slow organizational shifts to collectively practice language justice, and institutional-level administrative hurdles beyond the community engagement core’s influence. Strengthening language justice means integrating language justice institutionally and into all research processes; dedicating time and processes to learn about and practice language justice; equitably funding language justice within research budgets; equitably engaging bilingual, bicultural staff and language justice practitioners; and creating processes for language justice in written and oral research and collaborative activities. Language justice is not optional and necessitates buy-in, leadership, and support of community engagement cores, Center leadership, university administrators, and funders. We discuss implications for systems and policy change to advance language justice in research to promote health equity.

Though food insecurity has long been recognised to impact health, population-specific determinants of food insecurity have recently been studied systematically as an important public health concern. Indeed, while immigrant populations face particular challenges to equitable access to the food system, many of these concerns have not been systematically described. To this end, we critically review recent work that demonstrates the importance of transportation and language access as independent determinants of access to food for immigrant populations. Furthermore, we highlight proposals to mitigate barriers to access, including both academic and community-driven approaches to create overlapping institutional commitments for inclusive policymaking that meets the specific needs of diverse populations.