Clinical research is medical research that involves people like you. When you volunteer to take part in clinical research, you help doctors and researchers learn more about disease and improve health care for people in the future. The goal of clinical trials is to determine if these treatment, prevention, and behavior approaches are safe and effective. People take part in clinical trials for many reasons. Healthy volunteers say they take part to help others and to contribute to moving science forward. People with an illness or disease also take part to help others, but also to possibly receive the newest treatment and to have added (or extra) care and attention from the clinical trial staff. Clinical trials offer hope for many people and a chance to help researchers find better treatments for others in the future. If you have ever taken a pill or been treated for an illness, you have seen the benefit of clinical trials Each year, thousands of people just like you take part in clinical trials to help find ways to prevent, treat, and cure illness.

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Why should I Care?

As a minority, our presence in clinical studies is rare. The National Institutes of Health has found that minorities make up less than 10 percent of trial participants.

Without trial participation that is reflective of people of  color in a proportionate size, pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals are left assuming how various drugs work across  racial lines. For example; when you or a love one is prescribe a drug to treat a medical condition such as High Blood Pressure ; the dosage prescribe to you is based on the outcome data from that drugs clinical trial. If people of color were not proportionately represented in the trial the dosage of the medication may need to be significantly adjusted to treat the condition for  your genetic makeup.

In order to ensure our presence…..we must increase our presence.

We all matter in the equations of medical research and in one way or another it affects our everyday life.  Our past can not keep us from being successfully apart of medical advancements. Just as medicine has advanced so have the policies and procedures in clinical research to protect your rights.

There have been ground breaking advances in medical treatments only because people cared enough to participate.