Diversity in medical research is a long way off, study shows

Despite Congressional mandates aimed at diversifying clinical research, little has changed in the last 30 years in both the numbers of studies that include minorities and the diversity of scientists being funded, according to a new analysis by researchers at UC San Francisco.

That lack of diversity could have a serious impact on our ability to care for the nearly 40 percent of the current U.S. population whose heritage includes non-European races, the authors said, and will increase in urgency as the proportion of minority residents exceeds 50 percent in 2044.

The commentary, which was published Dec. 15, 2015, in the Policy Forum of online scientific journal PLoS Medicine, compiled 30 years of raw data on funding for research by non-White scientists, as well as two decades of analyses from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and others regarding the percentage of clinical studies that include racial and ethnic minorities.

The analysis was senior-authored by Esteban Burchard, MD, MPH, a UCSF School of Pharmacy faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine.

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Diversity in Medical Research Is a Long Way Off, Study Shows

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