Diversity & IncluSion in Research Underpinning Prevention & Therapy Trials

Autonomy:  The ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else or told what to do.

 

Clinical trial:  Clinical trials are medical research studies that involve volunteer participants. Clinical trials are created by medical doctors and researchers to compare existing medicines or treatments (like chemotherapy for cancer) and medical procedures (like surgery) and devices (like a heart valve) to learn if they are better than what is currently being given to patients. All medicines, treatments, procedures, and devices that patients get today were first tested in a clinical trial.

 

Diversity:  People with different physical, social, and personal traits or characteristics in a group or organization. These characteristics may include race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual identity, religion, physical and mental ability, language, income, and education. Diversity may also include different life experiences, cultural backgrounds, beliefs, and interests in a group.

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Eugenics:  The practice of improving the human race by selecting people who should mate and produce children with specific and desirable qualities that are inherited.  The purpose was to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease and undesirable characteristics from the human population.

 

US Food & Drug Administration (FDA):  An agency in the U.S. federal government whose responsibility it is to protect the health of the public by making sure that drugs, food, cosmetics, and nutritional supplements are safe to use and are truthfully labeled.

 

Placebo:  An inactive substance that looks the same as and is given the same way as the drug being tested.

 

Side effect:  An unwanted effect of a drug.

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​Source:  National Cancer Institute.  NCI Dictionary of cancer terms.  https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/search/phase/?searchMode=Begins