Table 2 Summary of domains of inequities identified by participants
Domain | Inequity Identified | Opportunities Identified |
|---|---|---|
Research Participation/ Engagement | • Less representation of minority background or non-English-speaking subjects • Clinical investigations bias white subjects | • Involve more non-English speaking participants in research • Recruit representative minority groups in research studies |
Research Funding | • Elite institutions secure most of the funding • Senior established researchers have an advantage and receive more funding • Money drives topic selection • Researchers with high output are valued more • Emerging treatments harder to get funding for than traditional interventions • Unequal access to funding from emerging areas of enquiry • Western-centric funding • Funding supports better marketed diseases i.e. cancer | • Consider blinding research proposal reviewers to institution and researcher names so proposals are judged on their own merit/quality • Raise awareness of emerging biases • Use an equity lens to help inform funding allocations • Build research capacity by allotting funding for teaching, graduate student work and mentorship initiatives |
Research Topic Prioritization | • Skewed topic selection to people who run trials • Most ‘trendy topics’ selected • Topics are selected with impassioned campaigns or personal experience of funders • Topics do not reflect all populations or population health priorities • Study focuses on illness and not health disparities • Topics that do not fit within a single discipline are often underexplored | • Explore patient priorities • Promote research of health issues that impact females and gender minorities • Promote more interdisciplinary collaboration |
International Collaborations | • Unequal distribution of resources posing a barrier to inclusion of LMICs in international collaborations • Under-investigation of diseases that primarily impact LMICs | • Incentivize international collaboration between research groups • Share ideas and methodologies between different world regions • Invest in generation of research data on diseases that impact specific LMIC populations • Build research capacity by connecting expert researchers from HICs to other parts of the world, reach out and provide support for budding leaders and research structures |