In an effort to advance health equity, a team of researchers led by IDS affiliate Susan Racine Passmore and Gina Green-Harris has developed and tested a new curriculum that aims to help clinical research teams implement more inclusive practices. Despite persistent health inequities, clinical research participants are disproportionately drawn from populations with the best health outcomes. This leaves gaps in our knowledge about how treatments and prevention methods work for those most in need.
Passmore, Green-Harris, and others at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have worked for over a decade to eliminate exclusionary practices that create barriers to participation in clinical studies. These barriers include possible research biases and restrictive eligibility criteria that disproportionately exclude certain groups. Often, recruitment efforts for studies focus on places that already lack diversity, such as academic health centers. This new initiative builds on past work to address these systemic challenges through a new curriculum design informed by diversity science.
The project was funded by the Institute for Diversity Science and implemented through the Just Research Program. Green-Harris and Passmore, who co-direct the program, played main roles in developing the curriculum, facilitating workshops, designing a study to evaluate the curriculum, and overseeing the project. Other contributors include Kat Phelps, who assisted in curriculum development and facilitation, and Roger Brown, who contributed to the study design and ongoing quantitative analysis.
A key innovation of the curriculum was the shift from an “anti-bias” framework to a “pro-diversity” approach. Instead of focusing on bias reduction case studies, the new curriculum encouraged participants to develop pathways to inclusion based on their own experiences. The researchers showed videos featuring University of Wisconsin investigators and community partners who have been affected by health disparities. These videos used a “social norms approach” – demonstrating that pro-diversity behaviors were normal and expected.
In early 2024, the team conducted six full-day workshops with 126 research investigators and staff members. Three workshops used the traditional anti-bias curriculum, while the remaining three implemented the pro-diversity model. Participants completed pre-, post-, and follow-up surveys to measure their attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors related to inclusive research practices.
While the team’s analysis showed no significant differences in attitudes or self-efficacy between the two groups, participants from the pro-diversity workshops were more likely to take action by advocating for inclusive practices. This included increasing community engagement, hiring diverse staff, and implementing outreach programs. Interviews with participants showed that the of a research group played a large role in the success of implementing these changes.
The team is unique nationally in applying diversity science to improve inclusive research practices. They hope their findings will contribute to meaningful change in the field of clinical research and health equity.