Combating Structural Inequities: A Call-to-Action for Clinical and Translational Research

Emerging from an annual meeting of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program, a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine calls for the clinical and translational research enterprise to put diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the heart of its work.

In order to address current and future health inequities and crises, the piece argues, it is time to move from documenting these issues to solving them. The piece sets forth four goals to achieve DEI in clinical and translational research, which were curated with the help of two members of the UR CTSI’s Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration: Director of Metrics Implementation & Dissemination Raquel Ruiz, M.B.A., M.A.Ed., and Director of Research Education Alfred Vitale, Ph.D.

Those goals include: 1) ensuring that research leadership and workforce reflect the diversity of the communities they serve; 2) funding health equity and community-oriented research at parity with biomedical research; 3) building community capacity for research and improving public understanding and trust in science; and 4) ensuring clinical trial participants reflect the diversity of people with the health conditions under study.

Learn more from the Duke University School of Medicine, home of first author L. Ebony Boulware, M.D., professor and chief of General Internal Medicine.

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The University of Rochester Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC) is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health under grant U24TR002260.

 

Michael Hazard | 1/15/2022

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