Strategies to Improve Inclusion in Research

To save trans inclusion efforts, let's stop chasing bad actors and instead leverage the following strategies to de-polarize Trans inclusion and improve outcomes for all: 🎬 First, when it comes to programming, let's leverage storytelling more than we leverage hard facts/data. Hitting a skeptical leader over the head with the suicidality rate for Trans youth is not going to make them wake up. In fact, it will likely make them double down on their existing beliefs because someone in polarization (your Uncle Bob for example) can only take in facts and data that support their ~existing~ world view. It's much easier to see ourselves in someone's personal story. This explains the power of a strong Coming Out Panel. We need stories from trans people but also stories from parents who have trans kids, straight white men who are working to disrupt toxic masculinity and anyone who is disrupting conventional gender expectations. By building an intersectional coalition of people negatively impacted by gender norms, we can better advocate for the outcomes we want. 💇♀️ Second, we need to provide opportunities for non-LGBTQ people to explore their own gender rather than another vocab lesson about pronouns. My most successful facilitation question is "Tell me about the first time you performed gender incorrectly?" When you give men and women the space to explore how their family of origin, school system and culture set them up with restrictive gender expectations, it helps them realize that, "Oh, this isn't about trans people. This is about my right to define who I am and express who I am without consequences. I have something at stake here." ⛓️ Third, we need to tie Trans inclusion into our organization's core values. If our values are "excellence" and "innovation," then Trans team members being excluded from contributing our talents and ideas fully due to intentional misgendering, hiring and advancement bias and being unable to access healthcare aren't just instances of trans exclusion, they invalidate who we say we are as an organization. Leaders need to see that THEY are living out of alignment with THEIR stated core values. By helping leaders go into that moral and cognitive dissonance, the desire to change and the desire for action emerges 🌎 Finally, we need to connect Trans inclusion to the systems that need to change to improve outcomes for ALL employees. I guarantee you that Trans people are not the only group who worry about fair promotions. When we set a broader goal of "eliminating bias in performance reviews by implementing structured rubrics and training managers on providing feedback" we can build systems that are free of bias for ALL employees. By leveraging these approaches we shift the goal from "how to we stop those 1 or 2 bad actors" to "how do we create a workplace where everyone has what they need to thrive." I find the latter to be much more exciting and well within our reach. ❤️

Almost every Product leader I speak to shares about being interested in having an impact. It's fascinating to note that impactful changes don't always necessitate grand visions. They can be achieved through incremental steps, one customer at a time, by fostering inclusivity in our product development processes. Annie Jean-Baptiste shares "Product Inclusion is the practice of applying an inclusive lens throughout the entire product design and development process to create better products and accelerate business growth." In my journey, I've found that significant enhancements often result from incremental adjustments: 💡 Inclusive Research: Ensure our research is inclusive and we are learning from diverse customers. Even incorporating one additional dimension of diversity into our research approach can render our products a tad more inclusive. 💡 Harms Modelling: Prior to commencing product development, conducting a pre-mortem exercise focused on mitigating potential harm to our customers can significantly enhance inclusivity in our products. 💡 Diverse teams: Cultivating diverse teams fosters a rich diverse set of perspectives, thereby enriching our product development process and ensuring inclusivity is woven into the fabric of our product development. 💡 Testing with diverse customers: Leveraging diverse customer cohorts for testing enables us to identify and rectify potential biases or exclusions, resulting in products that cater to a broader audience. 💡 Building with diverse customers: Involving diverse customers in the co-creation process empowers us to tailor our products to their unique needs and preferences, fostering a sense of ownership and inclusivity. 💡 Accessibility Integration: Incorporating features such as screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and adjustable font sizes can significantly improve accessibility and inclusivity. I found that testing accessibility before launching is a great way to minimize negative impact. #productinclusion #productmanagement #productleadership

I am energized by two recent visits to clinical trial sites that are embedded in communities last month in Brownsville, TX and Washington DC. In order for clinical research to be more diverse and inclusive, we must engage potential participants in places where they live their daily lives. Thank you to Dr. Christopher Romero, Dr. Alejandro Silva, and Joanne Stevens of Headlands Research in Brownsville, Texas, and Dr. Audrey Escobedo-Escotto, MD, MPH, Dr. Fabian Sandoval, MD, and Dr. @Andres Jimenez of Emerson Clinical Research Institute in Washington, DC, for hosting members of the Milken Institute Health team for a tour of your facilities and sharing insights with us. Here are some of my takeaways: 1. Authentic connection with people and communities is key. Care and trustworthiness are demonstrated by consistently showing up at school supply drives, cultural festivals, health fairs, or other locally-important events and when researchers take time to engage meaningfully, clinical research starts to lose its fear-factor and becomes something people are excited for. 2. Communities have an appetite for this work. Whether it’s to help their families and neighbors, to get easier access to high-quality care, to contribute to research or management of their own health conditions, their desire and willingness to contribute is strong. The ecosystem needs to stop holding them back. 3. A centralized administrative infrastructure is hugely helpful to new sites. Headlands' approach of centralizing business development, regulatory filings, and similar operations is key to letting the site itself focus on building connections with the community and conducting the research. 4. Health outreach and screening is better when it’s patient-centered and local. For example, Emerson offers screening in consulates across Washington, DC, to help patients when they need it most. 5. Recruitment and outreach policies must be flexible. Clinical trial advertisement can't just be in social media; in order to reach specific audiences, the best strategy might be a radio ad or newspaper. 6. It’s time to get practical about inclusion. Telling a patient who is willing and excited to participate in a trial that they must wait to enroll because the consent forms haven’t yet been translated into their primary language sends a signal that the research is not truly for them. 7. Maintaining a sustainable workforce is a common issue. Attracting and retaining local talent is one of the greatest challenges, and could be helped by building connections among local training institutes and trial sites or other creative pipeline strategies. To support advancing inclusive clinical research, read Toward a National Action Plan for Achieving Diversity in Clinical Trials and check out FasterCures ENRICH-CT- coalition of leading organizations working to make clinical trials more accessible.

Tip Tuesday! Clinical Research Coffee & Conversation: Let’s chat about making research more patient-centric: ☕️ Use patient-friendly language: Make sure that research materials, consent forms, and information sheets are written in plain language that is easily understandable by patients. Avoid jargon and technical terms as much as possible. ☕️ Incorporate patient perspectives: Include patient-reported outcomes and experiences as important measures in your research. This helps capture the patient's viewpoint on the impact of a condition or treatment. ☕️ Engage patients as partners: Collaborate with patients throughout the research process, involving them in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Their insights and lived experiences can provide valuable perspectives. ☕️ Continuously evaluate and improve: Seek feedback from patients on their experience of participating in the research process. Use their insights to improve future studies and make research even more patient-centric. By implementing these strategies, you can help ensure that research is conducted with a strong patient focus, ultimately leading to improved healthcare outcomes and patient satisfaction. #patientcentric #patientengagement #clinicalresearchers #clinicaltrials #diversityequityinclusion #tiptuesday

Building an Inclusive Education R&D Ecosystem: Actionable Steps Fostering inclusive infrastructures has emerged as a critical challenge and a strategic imperative in the rapidly evolving landscape of education research and development (R&D). The Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), EducationCounsel, and InnovateEDU just released a Task Force Brief: Making the education R&D ecosystem more inclusive. We hosted a Research and Science Policy Forum / Honorary President Edmund Gordon series session at #AERA to explore the nuances of creating R&D ecosystems that acknowledge and actively embrace variation in culture, perspective, and context. Today’s brief provides insights into practical approaches for facilitating more equitable participation in R&D activities and ensuring that research outputs are relevant and accessible to a broad spectrum of stakeholders through knowledge mobilization and engagement. Inclusive education R&D should prioritize diverse perspectives, authentically engage stakeholders, and empower practitioners and communities to lead R&D efforts. This approach promises to bridge the gap between research and practice, fostering greater buy-in, enabling more effective knowledge mobilization, and enhancing the societal relevance and impact of research. Participatory approaches to education R&D promise to foster stakeholder ownership and commitment, benefit from diverse perspectives, and yield more just and equitable solutions. Recommendations include:  Prioritize knowledge mobilization and engagement to increase the impact of education R&D. Invest in high-quality collaborative education R&D efforts centered at the state and local levels. Leverage fellowships to add R&D capacity. Provide R&D funding directly to practitioners and communities. Embrace authentic R&D partnerships. Design more inclusive Requests for Applications (RFAs). Fund HBCUs, MSIs, and TCUs. Diversify peer reviewers. Make the invisible visible. Developing, fortifying, and maintaining a more inclusive R&D environment in education requires ongoing dedication. Please re-post and react to help spread the word: Jessica Heppen, James L. Moore III, James L. Moore III, Na'ilah Nasir, Matthew Soldner, Elizabeth Albro, PhD, Shaun Harper, Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Joyce Elaine King, Barbara Schneider, kris Gutierrez, Carol Lee, Marvin Smith, Laura Hamilton, Augustus Mays, Winsome Waite, PhD, Pamela Cantor MD, Jeremy Roschelle, Susan Lyons, Chris L., Gabriela Lopez, Auditi Chakravarty, Christina Cipriano, Temple Lovelace, Jennifer Randall, Sara Schapiro, Aneesha Badrinarayan, Scott Marion, Lindsay Jones, Charles Barone, Erin Mote, Bethany Little, Kelly Fitzsimmons, Denise Forte, Katrina Stevens, Katie Boody Adorno, Bridget Cherry,

Let's tackle some common ways organizations miss the mark on their inclusion efforts. Tokenism: Instead of merely hiring a few individuals from underrepresented groups and using them as symbols of diversity, organizations should commit to genuine inclusion. Create diverse hiring panels, set measurable diversity goals, and ensure equal opportunities for everyone, irrespective of their background. Lack of Inclusion: Foster an inclusive workplace culture by promoting open dialogue and creating safe spaces for employees to express themselves. Implement mentorship programs, affinity groups, and regular diversity and inclusion training to ensure all employees feel valued and heard. Unconscious Bias: Conduct regular diversity and bias training for employees at all levels. Encourage employees to recognize and confront their biases through workshops, seminars, and awareness campaigns. Consider using blind recruitment techniques to minimize bias in hiring. Insufficient Representation: Ensure diversity at all levels of your organization, including leadership roles. Develop targeted programs to identify and nurture talent from underrepresented groups. Implement succession planning to give diverse employees opportunities for growth and advancement. Lack of Training: Invest in comprehensive diversity and inclusion training for all employees. Cover topics like cultural competence, respectful communication, and understanding intersectionality. Provide resources for ongoing learning and support, such as diversity-focused reading materials and workshops.

Data tell stories. But when we group people into overly broad categories for race and ethnicity, specific communities and their unique needs can be rendered invisible. NYU City Health Dashboard understands the power of detailed, disaggregated race and ethnicity data! In their new blog post, Isabel Nelson, Samantha Breslin, and Avalon A. share three best practices for collecting more accurate data on race and ethnicity. By doing so, we can uncover inequities that are masked by broad groups and work toward more effective policies that allow everyone to thrive. To get there, data collectors should consider: 1️⃣ Collaboration: Working directly with communities in every step of the data collection process will ensure the questions asked will lead to answers that actually inform solutions. 2️⃣ Cultural competency: All cultures are unique, so each survey should be too. Data collectors must prioritize building trust and making communities feel seen and understood. 3️⃣ Inclusivity: While multiple choice survey responses are simple, they don’t leave space for people to specify how they identify and it risks excluding meaningful data. It’s best to include write-in opinions. Collecting better data is an important first step in any research endeavor. For best practices on reporting, learn more in the blog: https://lnkd.in/eDhb3bbA 

Brett Hauber at Pfizer and team report how patient organizations can help #clinicalresearch. Highlights include . . . 🏛️Regulatory agencies encourage increased patient engagement by industry throughout the medical product lifecycle. 😟 Despite the industry’s growing commitment to patient centricity, most patients are excluded from sharing their expertise in research; more inclusive methods of engaging patients as research partners are needed. 😱 For example, many patient preference studies are conducted only after a medicinal product is developed and the potential outcomes and product features are well understood. At this point it is too late to inform clinical trial endpoint selection. 👏Patient-centered co-creation of data can be conducted at any point in the medical product lifecycle from discovery and design through post-marketing Research partnerships with patient organizations, meaningful involvement and genuine commitment to listening to and incorporating diverse patient feedback and ideas into decision-making processes can: 1. improve health equity for the patient community improve patient outcomes, product innovation, and trust between patients and the healthcare industry 2. build trust 3. increase participation in research by patients who may otherwise be excluded help what is clinically feasible with what is necessary from a patient-centered perspective in research 4. ensure research is understandable and accessible to all patients ensure all treatment features and outcomes that matter to patients are included “For example, daily chronic pain and fertility concerns were not included initially; however, the patient group indicated that addressing these concerns is important to patients. Therefore, reducing daily chronic pain and reducing the risk of fertility issues were included in the list of features. The final list was developed using an iterative process between the sponsor and the patient group.” 💲In addition, engaging patients earlier in clinical development may result in financial benefits to sponsors. (See https://lnkd.in/gj7QxqZg) #patientvoice #patientengagement #biotechnology #medtech #pharmaceuticals

When was the last time your team considered accessibility in projects and strategic planning? If it’s not a constant focus, you might be missing out on serving approximately 16% of the world’s population, including both employees and customers. Accessibility and inclusion isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the way forward! Here are 7 key strategies to prioritize accessibility and inclusion in 2025: Raise Awareness: Educate your team on the significance of accessibility through workshops and training. Audit and Improve: Assess your workplace and products to pinpoint and address accessibility barriers. Design with Inclusion: Integrate accessibility as a fundamental aspect of every project right from the beginning. Engage Disabled Voices: Involve individuals with disabilities in design and testing processes for genuine insights. Use Assistive Tech: Implement tools like screen readers and voice recognition to improve accessibility. Communicate Clearly: Employ captions, transcripts, and plain language in all forms of communication. Measure, Adapt, and Enhance: Continuously collect feedback and enhance your accessibility initiatives. Small adjustments can have significant benefits! *Image Description:* An image showing Alycia pushing a wheelchair against a transparent background. The title "7 Tips for Prioritizing Accessibility" is displayed prominently. The tips listed below are: Raise Awareness, Audit and Improve, Design with Inclusion, Engage Disabled Voices, Use Assistive Tech, Communicate Clearly, Measure and Adapt. The design is sleek, professional, and emphasizes promoting accessibility and inclusion.