The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light, once again, the ongoing issue of racial health inequalities in the United States and around the globe. As the first vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 were being approved for use around the world, scrutiny of medical research and its oversight has highlighted the fact that there is still much to do to resolve the unending epidemic of racism in healthcare and to ensure diversity in clinical trials. Read more
Last year, Heather H. Pierce, JD, MPH and I shared some thoughts about the Belmont Report at 40, and about the evolution and flexibility of the Belmont principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice in the face of changing circumstances. As we leave behind the extraordinary year of 2020, I have been thinking about how the pandemic, together with the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, has shone new, and I would say welcome, light on the principle of justice in research. Read more
Amid both promising and worrying signs in the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, and in the context of a considerable amount of scrutiny of medical research, some researchers, ethicists, and advocates are working to make sure science doesn’t lose sight of a critical issue: diversity in the clinical trial participant pool. The distribution of research benefits to participants—and the consideration of race in subject selection—is tightly woven into the Belmont Report and has been a mainstay in research ethics discussion ever since. But despite the decades-long consideration of race and ethnicity in clinical trials, many trials still don’t enroll populations that reflect the diversity of the general populace or the group affected by the condition being studied. Read more
Human subjects research has long been plagued by racial inequality. While flagrant abuses have been curtailed, disparities have, unfortunately, persisted. Read more
When I started my research career back in 2004, I was working in the biggest trauma center in the Atlanta area, Grady Healthcare System. I had arrived in the country under a work visa to help with the Department of Orthopaedics' clinical trials. I remember the nervousness of speaking to potential study participants because I was not only new to clinical research, having only done chart review projects in the past, I was also new in America and America’s history of research with minorities. Now, after all these years working as a research coordinator and IRB professional, and living in the United States for more than 15 years, I know how important it is to rebuild trust and increase minority participation in research to ensure not only that we are doing quality studies, but also that we help in diminishing the social injustices our communities still undergo today. Read more
