EDI News

An industry emphasis on improving inclusion and diversity in clinical trials continues to grow, but strategies to achieve more balanced representation in research and clinical care remain elusive.

Shanti Narayanasamy is conducting a mixed-methods study that uses surveys and interviews to investigate how healthcare professionals think of race and use it in their practice.

Love was, if not the first Black employee at Duke Hospital and the School of Medicine, one of the first, beginning his service during a time of legally enforced segregation. He spent the majority of his career with the Department of Pathology, which he joined about 15 years after starting at the hospital.

Annise Weaver, MSEd, CRC, director of clinical operations and associate director of diversity, equity and inclusion, won the 2022 Samuel DuBois Cook Society Staff Award in recognition of her leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism at Duke.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing health inequities and emphasized the need for community-engaged research to address those disparities, according to a panel of Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill experts. 

Since launching its Moments to Movement initiative in June 2020, Duke University School of Medicine has begun work to better understand the root causes and harms of racism and to develop strategies to reduce racial inequity.

Race, and how people are treated differently because of it, leads to major differences in health outcomes for cancer and other diseases. As a bit of an outsider, Akinyemiju (pronounced Ah-keen-yah-MEE-jew) saw this aspect of culture and health as something to be examined and dissected. She has built her career doing that.

At age 93, Pearl Asbury joined a study at the Duke CTSI office in Kannapolis at the North Carolina Research Campus to better understand kidney disease in people of African ancestry. “I always wanted to be involved in a study just for Afro-Americans. It is wonderful because for so much of our history, our health has not been understood,” said Asbury, who became the 100th person to enroll.

Kevin Thomas MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, has been named Duke University School of Medicine’s first Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Duke CTSI, Duke University School of Medicine, and Duke University Health System together have launched a new initiative aimed at achieving equitable representation in clinical research.