In brief
This Canadian rapid scoping review of 24 reports finds that Black children and youth in Canada build resilience through individual, relational, and community-level supports like matrifocal networks and spirituality, even as structural racism and systemic exclusion in education and healthcare remain the most pervasive..
What this article is about
Quick Answer
This Canadian rapid scoping review of 24 reports finds that Black children and youth in Canada build resilience through individual, relational, and community-level supports like matrifocal networks and spirituality, even as structural racism and systemic exclusion in education and healthcare remain the most pervasive barriers.
Student takeaways
Key Takeaways
- Of 24 reports meeting inclusion criteria (23 peer-reviewed articles and 1 thesis), the Canadian evidence on resilience among Black children and youth is geographically concentrated in Ontario and methodologically uneven across studies.
- Most included studies framed resilience against intersecting structural and systemic adversities, particularly anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and barriers to mental health care.
- Research to date has focused primarily on resilience capacities and processes, with comparatively little attention paid to resilience outcomes.
- Resilience among Black youth was supported by a dynamic combination of individual, relational, and community-level factors rather than any single protective factor.
- Barriers to resilience operated at systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels, with racial discrimination and structural racism identified as pervasive obstacles across the reviewed literature.
Student summary
Why This Research Matters
This article is a rapid scoping review that asks a simple but important question: what helps Black children and youth in Canada stay resilient in the face of racism and structural disadvantage, and what gets in the way? The research team, led by Emmanuel A. Marfo and colleagues, including Bukola Salami, noticed that most research and media coverage about Black youth in Canada focuses on problems and deficits rather than on the strengths these young people already show every day. This review was designed to correct that imbalance by pulling together the existing Canadian evidence on resilience in one place.
A scoping review is different from a typical research study because it does not collect new data from patients or participants. Instead, the team systematically searched the published literature to map out what is already known. They used four electronic databases plus ProQuest to capture gray literature (like theses that are not published in journals) and did a supplemental Google Scholar search to catch anything missed. Two reviewers worked independently to screen the studies and pull out the relevant data, which helps reduce bias and errors. Because this was a "rapid" review rather than a full systematic review, the process was streamlined to produce findings more quickly, though the core search-and-screen logic was still followed carefully.
In the end, 24 reports met the criteria: 23 peer-reviewed journal articles and one graduate thesis. The team then described what these 24 sources actually said about resilience, using descriptive statistics (counting things like where studies were done and what methods they used) alongside narrative synthesis (grouping similar findings together in words).
Five main patterns emerged. First, the evidence base has real gaps: it is heavily concentrated in Ontario, meaning we know much less about Black youth resilience in other provinces, and the methods used across studies varied a lot, making direct comparisons difficult. Second, most of the included studies framed resilience against a backdrop of intersecting adversities, particularly anti-Black racism inside schools, financial hardship, and barriers to getting mental health support. Third, researchers have focused mostly on resilience capacities and processes (how young people build and use resilience) rather than on outcomes (what actually happens to them later in life), so we know less about long-term results. Fourth, resilience did not come from any single source. It was built through a mix of individual traits, close relationships, and community supports working together. Fifth, the barriers standing in the way of resilience showed up at every level, from big systems, to interpersonal interactions, down to individual struggles, with racial discrimination and structural racism as the most consistent obstacles across studies.
The authors' overall message is that resilience among Black youth should not be understood as just a personal trait some kids happen to have. Instead, it is better understood as an active, ongoing process of resisting structural racism. Two particularly powerful facilitators that came up were matrifocal networks (support systems centered around mothers, grandmothers, and other women in the family and community) and spirituality. However, even these strengths are often undermined when Black youth face exclusion in education and healthcare settings. The authors conclude that addressing this problem requires structural reforms, not just individual-level interventions, and that nursing care that is relational (built on trust, respect, and genuine connection) has a role to play.
For nursing students, this review is a reminder that assessing a young Black client's resilience means looking beyond the individual to their family, community, and the systems around them, and that culturally responsive, anti-racist care is directly connected to supporting resilience rather than undermining it.
Source abstract
Study Overview
Background and Purpose Despite pervasive structural and systemic adversities, Black children and youth in Canada demonstrate significant resilience. However, mainstream discourse often privileges deficit-based narratives, marginalizing these strengths. This rapid scoping review identifies and synthesizes the breadth and depth of available evidence on resilience among Black young people in Canada to counter these stereotypes and inform culturally responsive interventions. Methods This rapid scoping review utilized four electronic databases, ProQuest (gray literature), and a supplemental Google Scholar search. Two independent reviewers performed screening and data extraction. Findings were synthesized using descriptive statistics and narrative description. Results A total of 24 reports, including 23 peer-reviewed articles, and one thesis met the inclusion criteria. Our findings reveal: (a) geographic (Ontario-centric) and methodological imbalances; (b) that most studies contextualized resilience around intersecting structural and systemic adversities, including anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and mental health barriers; (c) that research primarily explored resilience capacities and processes, with less attention given to outcomes; (d) that resilience was supported by a dynamic combination of individual, relational, and community-level factors; and (e) that barriers to resilience spanned systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels, with racial discrimination and structural racism acting as pervasive obstacles. Conclusions Resilience among Black youth is a dynamic process of resistance to structural racism, not just a personal trait. While matrifocal networks and spirituality are powerful facilitators, they are frequently hindered by systemic exclusion in education and healthcare. Future efforts must prioritize structural reforms and relational nursing care.
Evidence appraisal
Main Findings
- Of 24 reports meeting inclusion criteria (23 peer-reviewed articles and 1 thesis), the Canadian evidence on resilience among Black children and youth is geographically concentrated in Ontario and methodologically uneven across studies.
- Most included studies framed resilience against intersecting structural and systemic adversities, particularly anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and barriers to mental health care.
- Research to date has focused primarily on resilience capacities and processes, with comparatively little attention paid to resilience outcomes.
- Resilience among Black youth was supported by a dynamic combination of individual, relational, and community-level factors rather than any single protective factor.
- Barriers to resilience operated at systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels, with racial discrimination and structural racism identified as pervasive obstacles across the reviewed literature.
Practice transfer
Clinical Relevance
- Nurses working with Black children, youth, and families should assess resilience as a multi-level phenomenon, considering individual, family/relational, and community supports rather than focusing only on the individual client.
- Because matrifocal networks and spirituality were identified as facilitators, nurses can support resilience by respectfully engaging with a family's existing kinship and faith-based support systems rather than substituting generic interventions.
- Given that anti-Black racism in schools and structural barriers to mental health care were identified as recurring adversities, nurses in school health and community settings should be alert to how these systemic factors affect the young people they serve.
- The review's conclusion that resilience is an active process of resisting structural racism, not simply a personal trait, supports a shift away from deficit-based framing of Black youth toward relational, culturally responsive, and anti-racist nursing care, an orientation increasingly emphasized across Canadian nursing practice and education.
- Because the evidence is concentrated in Ontario, nurses practicing in other provinces should apply these findings cautiously and remain attentive to local context when caring for Black children and youth.
Faculty notes
Educational Relevance
This rapid scoping review by Marfo, Frimpong, Musavar, and Salami, published in the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research (2026), addresses a documented gap in the Canadian evidence base: the near-exclusive focus of research and public discourse on deficit-based narratives about Black children and youth, to the neglect of documented resilience. The review's stated purpose is to identify and synthesize existing Canadian evidence on resilience facilitators and barriers among Black young people in order to counter deficit framing and inform culturally responsive interventions.
Methodologically, the authors conducted a rapid scoping review (a streamlined variant of the full scoping review methodology, appropriate when timely synthesis is prioritized over exhaustive searching) across four electronic databases, supplemented by ProQuest for gray literature and a Google Scholar search for supplemental coverage. Two reviewers independently completed screening and data extraction, a standard rigor safeguard in scoping/systematic review methodology that reduces selection and extraction bias. Synthesis combined descriptive statistics (for mapping study characteristics) with narrative description (for thematic content), consistent with recognized scoping review reporting conventions (e.g., PRISMA-ScR-aligned approaches, though the abstract does not explicitly name a reporting framework).
A closely related protocol for a parallel scoping review effort by an overlapping author group (published in JMIR Research Protocols, 2025) describes a comparable methodological architecture — CINAHL, Ovid MEDLINE, ERIC, and PsycINFO as primary databases, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global for unpublished work, two-stage Covidence-supported screening, and an intersectionality-informed thematic analysis — for a broader Canada-and-US-scoped project. This is supplementary context, not confirmed detail about the present Canada-only paper, but it plausibly indicates the toolkit and framework this research team applies to this line of inquiry; instructors should present it as corroborating context rather than as fact directly sourced from this article.
The review included 24 reports (23 peer-reviewed articles, 1 thesis) and produced five substantive findings: (1) a geographic concentration in Ontario alongside methodological heterogeneity across studies, limiting comparability and national generalizability; (2) a predominant framing of resilience against intersecting adversities — anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and barriers to mental health care; (3) a disproportionate research focus on resilience capacities and processes relative to outcomes, leaving longer-term impact underexplored; (4) resilience as multiply determined, arising from a dynamic interplay of individual, relational, and community-level factors rather than any single source; and (5) barriers operating across systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels, with racial discrimination and structural racism identified as the most pervasive obstacles.
The authors' conceptual conclusion — that resilience functions as an active process of resistance to structural racism rather than a static personal trait — has direct pedagogical value for reframing how nursing students assess and discuss resilience in racialized populations. The identification of matrifocal networks and spirituality as facilitators, set against their frequent undermining by systemic exclusion in education and healthcare, offers a concrete teaching case for discussing cultural safety, anti-racist practice, and relational nursing care models.
For classroom use, this review pairs well with discussions of critical race theory in health research, PRISMA-ScR reporting standards, the strengths of rapid versus full scoping reviews, and the practical limits of gray-literature and single-thesis inclusion. Instructors should flag that the Ontario-centric evidence base constrains conclusions about other provinces and that the abstract alone does not report specific study designs, sample sizes, or effect estimates for individual included studies — appraisal exercises should stay within what the abstract explicitly supports.
Critical appraisal
Limitations
- This is a rapid scoping review rather than a full systematic review, meaning search and screening steps may have been streamlined, which can increase the risk of missing eligible studies compared to a full review.
- The evidence base itself is geographically concentrated in Ontario, so findings may not generalize to Black children and youth in other Canadian provinces and territories.
- The included studies used varied methodologies, which the authors note as a methodological imbalance that limits direct comparison and synthesis across studies.
Classroom use
Discussion Questions
- Why might a scoping review focused specifically on resilience be an important counterbalance to deficit-based research on Black children and youth?
- What are the practical differences between a rapid scoping review and a full systematic review, and what trade-offs does that make for the strength of the conclusions?
- How might the Ontario-centric concentration of evidence limit what nurses in other provinces can conclude about Black youth resilience in their own communities?
- What does it mean to describe resilience as 'a dynamic process of resistance to structural racism' rather than a fixed personal trait, and how might that reframing change clinical assessment?
- How could nurses meaningfully engage with matrifocal networks and spirituality as facilitators of resilience without overstepping cultural boundaries or making assumptions about a family's practices?
- In what ways might anti-Black racism within schools act as a barrier to resilience, and what role, if any, can school or community health nurses play in addressing this?
- Why is it significant that most existing research has focused on resilience processes and capacities rather than outcomes, and what kinds of future studies would help close that gap?
- How can relational nursing care, as the authors recommend, be operationalized in everyday practice with Black children, youth, and their families?
- What ethical considerations arise when synthesizing gray literature such as an unpublished thesis alongside peer-reviewed journal articles in a scoping review?
- How might structural reforms in education and healthcare, as called for by the authors, complement or be limited by individual-level nursing interventions?
Knowledge check
Quiz
1. What type of review methodology did the authors use in this study?
- A randomized controlled trial
- A rapid scoping review
- A meta-analysis
- A case-control study
Rationale: The abstract states: 'This rapid scoping review utilized four electronic databases, ProQuest (gray literature), and a supplemental Google Scholar search.'
2. How many reports met the inclusion criteria for this review?
- 12 reports
- 18 reports
- 24 reports
- 30 reports
Rationale: The abstract states: 'A total of 24 reports, including 23 peer-reviewed articles, and one thesis met the inclusion criteria.'
3. Which single graduate work, alongside peer-reviewed articles, was included in the review?
- A conference poster
- A thesis
- A government report
- A clinical trial registration
Rationale: The abstract specifies the 24 reports included '23 peer-reviewed articles, and one thesis.'
4. The reviewed evidence was found to be geographically concentrated in which province?
- British Columbia
- Ontario
- Quebec
- Nova Scotia
Rationale: The abstract notes findings reveal 'geographic (Ontario-centric)... imbalances' in the reviewed literature.
5. According to the review, most included studies contextualized resilience around which of the following?
- Genetic predisposition to resilience
- Intersecting structural and systemic adversities such as anti-Black racism in schools
- Individual personality traits alone
- Access to recreational programming
Rationale: The abstract states most studies contextualized resilience 'around intersecting structural and systemic adversities, including anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and mental health barriers.'
6. The review found that research has primarily explored which aspect of resilience, with less attention to outcomes?
- Resilience capacities and processes
- Resilience outcomes only
- Resilience in adults
- Resilience measurement tools exclusively
Rationale: The abstract states research 'primarily explored resilience capacities and processes, with less attention given to outcomes.'
7. At what levels did the review find barriers to resilience operating?
- Systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels
- Only at the individual level
- Only at the systemic level
- Only at the family level
Rationale: The abstract states 'barriers to resilience spanned systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels, with racial discrimination and structural racism acting as pervasive obstacles.'
8. Which two facilitators of resilience are specifically named in the review's conclusions?
- School attendance and extracurricular activities
- Matrifocal networks and spirituality
- Income level and housing
- Peer tutoring and mentorship programs
Rationale: The abstract states 'matrifocal networks and spirituality are powerful facilitators, they are frequently hindered by systemic exclusion in education and healthcare.'
9. According to the authors' conclusion, resilience among Black youth should be understood as what?
- A fixed personal trait present from birth
- A dynamic process of resistance to structural racism
- An outcome that cannot be influenced by systems
- A measure of academic achievement only
Rationale: The abstract concludes: 'Resilience among Black youth is a dynamic process of resistance to structural racism, not just a personal trait.'
10. What do the authors recommend as priorities for future efforts based on their findings?
- Structural reforms and relational nursing care
- Only individual counseling for youth
- Standardized testing in schools
- Reducing the number of community programs
Rationale: The abstract states: 'Future efforts must prioritize structural reforms and relational nursing care.'
Study cards
Flashcards
What is the primary purpose of this rapid scoping review?
To identify and synthesize existing evidence on resilience among Black young people in Canada to counter deficit-based narratives and inform culturally responsive interventions.
What review methodology did the authors use?
A rapid scoping review, a streamlined form of scoping review used when timely synthesis is prioritized.
How many electronic databases were searched, and what additional sources were used?
Four electronic databases were searched, plus ProQuest for gray literature and a supplemental Google Scholar search.
Who conducted the screening and data extraction, and why does this matter?
Two independent reviewers conducted screening and data extraction, which reduces selection and extraction bias.
How were the findings synthesized?
Findings were synthesized using descriptive statistics and narrative description.
How many reports met the inclusion criteria, and what were they?
24 reports met the inclusion criteria: 23 peer-reviewed articles and 1 thesis.
What geographic imbalance did the review identify?
The evidence was geographically concentrated in Ontario (Ontario-centric), limiting generalizability to other provinces.
What kinds of adversities did most studies use to contextualize resilience?
Anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and mental health barriers.
Did the reviewed research focus more on resilience processes/capacities or outcomes?
The research primarily explored resilience capacities and processes, with less attention given to outcomes.
At what levels did factors supporting resilience operate?
Resilience was supported by a dynamic combination of individual, relational, and community-level factors.
At what levels did barriers to resilience operate?
Barriers operated at systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels.
What was identified as the most pervasive obstacle to resilience across the reviewed literature?
Racial discrimination and structural racism.
How does the review conceptualize resilience in its conclusion?
As a dynamic process of resistance to structural racism, not just a personal trait.
Which two facilitators does the review highlight as especially powerful?
Matrifocal networks and spirituality.
How are matrifocal networks and spirituality described as being undermined?
They are frequently hindered by systemic exclusion in education and healthcare.
What two priorities do the authors recommend for future efforts?
Structural reforms and relational nursing care.
What is a matrifocal network, in the context of this review?
A support system centered around mothers, grandmothers, and other women in the family and community that can facilitate resilience.
Why might a 'rapid' scoping review carry more limitations than a full systematic review?
A rapid review streamlines search and screening steps, which can increase the risk of missing eligible studies compared to a full, exhaustive review.
Name two of the five main findings from this review.
Any two of: geographic/methodological imbalances; adversity-focused framing of resilience; focus on processes over outcomes; multi-level facilitators; multi-level barriers with racism as the pervasive obstacle.
What population and country does this review focus on?
Black children and young people in Canada.
Search-ready answers
Frequently asked questions
What is this rapid scoping review about?
It synthesizes existing Canadian research on what helps and hinders resilience among Black children and youth, aiming to counter deficit-based narratives and inform culturally responsive interventions.
How many studies were included in the review?
24 reports met the inclusion criteria: 23 peer-reviewed articles and one thesis.
What databases and sources did the researchers search?
Four electronic databases, ProQuest for gray literature, and a supplemental Google Scholar search.
What geographic gap did the review find in the Canadian evidence?
The evidence was concentrated in Ontario, meaning there is less research on Black youth resilience in other Canadian provinces and territories.
What kinds of adversities were most commonly discussed alongside resilience in the reviewed studies?
Anti-Black racism in schools, socioeconomic hardship, and barriers to mental health care.
What factors were found to support resilience among Black youth?
A dynamic combination of individual, relational, and community-level factors, including matrifocal networks and spirituality.
What was found to be the most consistent barrier to resilience?
Racial discrimination and structural racism, which showed up across systemic, interpersonal, and individual levels.
Does the review say resilience is just an individual personality trait?
No. The authors conclude resilience is better understood as a dynamic process of resistance to structural racism, not simply a personal trait.
What do the authors recommend based on their findings?
They recommend that future efforts prioritize structural reforms alongside relational nursing care.
Is this review specific to Canada, or does it include other countries?
This particular review focuses on Black children and young people in Canada; a related protocol by an overlapping research team also planned a broader Canada-and-US comparison, but this article's findings are Canada-specific.