This research project received funding through the 2023-2024 Institute for Diversity Science Seed Grant Program
Principal Investigator: Susan Passmore, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, UW-Madison
Co-Investigators: Gina Green-Harris, Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships, School of Medicine and Public Health, UW-Madison, and Roger Brown, Professor, School of Nursing, UW-Madison
Abstract: Despite the existence of avoidable inequities in the distribution of health and well-being, clinical research participants disproportionately represent people with the best health outcomes. This means that new treatments and prevention methods are developed and tested with limited information about how they work for those most in need which, ultimately, increases health disparity gaps.
The problem is complex. Our work for over a decade has been to decrease the use of common exclusionary practices and behaviors that create barriers to inclusive research participation such as research bias, the use of needlessly narrow eligibility requirements that effect groups disproportionately or setting all recruitment/enrollment efforts in places where there is an existing lack of diversity such as academic health centers. In this project, we will test a new curriculum based on promising new evidence from the field of diversity science to teach researchers how to implement inclusive practices. We will track researcher confidence in their abilities as well as their practices follow training. Ultimately, we hope to apply diversity science to solve a problem that currently blocks progress toward health equity and results in avoidable poor health and early death.