Six ways to promote diversity in research

Building trust and increasing inclusion can be at the heart of health research, according to a new commentary.

Involving people in health research is about more than asking them to take part in a trial or study. Volunteers also help to shape our research activities – what we do and how we do it. We call this Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE).

This helps to ensure our trials and studies are relevant to people’s needs and provide maximum benefit to people’s health.

However, some ethnic minority communities are often underrepresented in this process.

An international team of researchers and public partners have outlined six ways to address this issue in a new paper published in Public Health.

Based on previous research

Southampton researchers played a key role in the national Co-POWeR study. It explored the impact of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of people from ethnic minority communities.

The Southampton team, led by Professor Maria Stokes, focused on physical activity and nutrition.

Five public partners were recruited to guide this work. They were actively involved in steering project activities and decision-making.

“The project enabled us and the rest of the community to feel and experience inclusion”, one public partner explained.

“Everyone, regardless of their backgrounds, age or other protected characteristics, was encouraged to be involved and share their voice.”

Promoting inclusion

The new paper details six main strategies to foster trust and inclusion. They are:

• Early recruitment and engagement of PPIE partners

• Relationship-focused engagement

• Co-production and consultation activities

• Open communication and iterative feedback

• Co-production of project closure activities

• Diverse research team

In Co-POWeR, this work led to widespread inclusion of ethnic minority communities.

By engaging with communities face-to-face, researchers were able to build strong relationships and trust. They found this supported recruitment - even among those who were initially reluctant to join the project.

Olatundun Gafari, a Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Southampton, was the paper’s lead author.

She said: “Building trust and working with communities with different cultures and experiences can sometimes be a challenge. It is important that the way research is done, and its outcomes, are relevant to our communities. To achieve this, we need to start doing things differently.

“It was such a privilege working closely with diverse members of the Southampton community and to have some of them as authors of this paper, which highlights some important steps to make research more relevant. We hope the strategies we outline will help researchers, practitioners and policy makers when planning their public health projects.”

Get involved

Opportunities to help shape our research are varied and will depend on your interests. If you would like to find out more, please email PublicInvolvement@uhs.nhs.uk.