This is great! Thanks for sharing!

And I'm also curious who in your mind is doing well removing those barriers?

What support do early stage companies need, or that currently exists, to improve the odds of receiving VC funding for projects that disproportionally impact women of color?

The easy answer is to hit them in the pocketbook! Design/Development campaigns that steer women towards companies that are intentional towards the needs of women and w=away from those that aren't.

COVID has shined a light on the importance of these issues and most are now motivated to evoke change. But there has to be a paradigm cultural shift for effective sustained change. The recognition of the value and new opportunities of such a change from antiquated processes to new innovations that are inclusive of all voices, in particular underrepresented, underserved, and underreported populations (like those of women of color) will continue to motivate. Formulating a new 'system' will require a multi-pronged approach involving all stakeholders to work synergistically together and be inclusive of all perspectives, namely those disproportionately left out such as women of color.

As a community, we need to make it transparent that addressing needs for everyone, especially women of color is not a feature, but a requirement. If we need to get down to ROI, we can talk about how costly not addressing important health needs for women of color can be. As well, we can highlight that designing thoughtful innovation, enables larger scale and adoption in masses that translates to a better experience for everyone.

Many of the strategies highlighted in the NIH ORWH Inclusion Outreach Toolkit - https://orwh.od.nih.gov/toolkit have be leveraged to effectively recruit and retention women and women of color.

It's important to consider the history of how diverse populations, and particularly Black women, have been engaged (at times, even without their consent, thinking of the experiences of Henrietta Lacks and others) to fully understand the complexity of the challenge here. A few things are key: we need diversity in our research teams, and for that diversity to be visible to potential study participants. We need to be clear and explicit with consent (the what, the why, the how) and to ensure that we're making potential participants comfortable and secure in their decision to engage, and clear in our intent not to harm. We also need for participation to be flexible, and for study design to be patient-centered - including our consideration for social/structural barriers to access and participation - if we want participant populations to match our actual population.

In my role a Chief Medical Officer, I find that education is key. Having forums where those you are interested in engaging in the study can come and ask questions and learn more. Engaging key healthcare providers and other community stakeholders is also important. Share the impact of clinical research with those that may have participate to demonstrate how impactful their participation can be. Be honest about what challenges have been faced in clinical trials in the past and what safeguards have been enacted to prevent those events from occurring today. Try your best to meet people where they are and invite them to join you on the clinical research journey

I will be honest and say that direct community outreach has been key. As the PI for PowerMom, a research platform for studying maternal health, with a focus on prioritizing in this research; recruitment and retention of women of color, especially black women is vital. I have a participant advisory board of pregnant or recently delivered moms who give feedback on our app. I also work with community partners for outreach and marketing, who have direct access to this population. Between getting the direct iterative feedback from black and brown moms; and working with local and national community partners, I have found success there. We partner with other organizations that have the same mission alignment and we work together. Our partnership with Mae is a key example.
Additionally, we also reach out to key Social Media influencers of color.

More direct to participant research, meeting the participants where they are and designing our studies to fit their lives, rather than expecting them to fit our research. Additionally, as has been said by my parters above; working directly with key community stakeholders and including the participants in design.

I would like to see companies take a long term vision and invest in communities of color to first build trust. Spend time understanding what problems the community needs to be solved.

Direct outreach and engagement within communities of color who may be disproportionately impacted by the disease/condition that your clinical study device is aiming to address.

Increasing and retaining diversity—great question. First is to actively make this an intentional priority rather than hoping it’s byproduct of the process. Additionally, developing inclusive and flexible work schedules allows access to a diverse groups of individuals that might have different life circumstances/needs.

In our case, with Mae, we've hired intentionally to prioritize both functional experience and also a deep passion for maternal health equity. While that passion is shared by many, perhaps it's fair to say that it runs the deepest for individuals who have been directly impacted by the particular issue we're serving. That's led us to an early team that deeply reflects our target users. And it's worth stating that we have not had to compromise in any way on the functional strength or experience on our team to have that diversity in place. As far as retention, my view, and my personal experience, is that feeling valued, having the room and autonomy to lead in your area of expertise, and living in a space that's fun, respectful, and full of learning and growth, keeps people in place. Of course, life happens, and for incredible people, new opportunities emerge, but the goal for Mae is that no one ever leaves because they didn't feel valued or treated with respect. My hope is that we can hang onto everyone if we live by those principles.

We need more diversity at the table during R&D, Clinical trial design, and engagement with patient and physicians who take care of these populations with the unmet need. That looks like working more physicians of color, industry partnerships and others with diverse perspectives

I couldn't agree more with the response's below. If leadership and decision makers don't reflect the populations that we are trying to serve, then we will fail to serve and improve health outcomes for those most in need. There is nothing more powerful than 'a lived experience' to drive meaningful change/progress.

One of the best ways to increase and retain diversity is to open new opportunities. We need to be creative into how to create this together and join forces with different disciplines because the future of healthcare technology involves already a very specialized group of stakeholders that may have initial barriers to entry if traditionally some career paths lack diversity. We see opportunities like Women in STEM programs, there are also networks of medical experts and building and strengthening the community is important. Having role models enables younger generations to join as well.

Internal Sponsorship! I know that my growth in industry is a direct result of leaders recognizing my value and giving me opportunities to shape the business in ways that had previously not been considered, especially clinical trial design and enrollment. I used epidemiology data to drive the understanding where the burden of illness existed and clinical leaders treating diverse patients to inform trial design.

I love this question! As the PI of a mobile research platform dedicated to increasing diversity in maternal health research; we need to make sure that our mobile applications, medical technology platforms ect incorporate the voices of those who we need to include. We need to make sure that we are featuring diverse faces and content.

Diversity needs to pay an integral and early role in product development rather than a secondary role or trying to make a product that has already been created now fit the needs of a specific population. Key factors in developing inclusive product strategies is being inclusive in the team developing the product.

Great question! Some key factors/learning from the innovation space:
1. Great tech does not equal great implementation
2. Implementation process is often more important than the tech itself
3. It becomes extremely important to get stakeholder buy-in and to understand the drivers of adoption.

Given above, there needs to be growing recognition of how important input from users are. If a technology is not accessible to people who benefit most, it is not going to scale. Everyone's voice needs to be heard and understanding how to deploy accessible solutions means talking to every walk of life that will be an end user.

It's incumbent upon all of us, as innovators building inclusive products, to build in close partnerships with those we're intending to serve. What that means is that we all have to listen and learn from our users, and to do that continuously as we improve our products over time. There is a huge diversity in experience that we each have as individuals, and as patients or healthcare consumers, and we should never assume to know those experiences or the impact they have on motivating healthcare behaviors or engagement. So building user stories that are directly informed by what our users are experiencing, and understanding how those experiences impact product engagement and should inform our future agile product design is key. Continuing to check in with those real-life users to see if we've hit the mark allows us to continue to strengthen our product over time.

Thank you for the question. Diversity should be a part of the entire product life cycle. From defining the clinical unmet need - gathering diverse patient insights, exploring communities of diverse populations and uncovering access issues affecting these communities; to inviting diverse voices to drive insights on R&D and innovation; to delivering, if needed, ethnic, gender, race or socioeconomic specific medical devices or pharmaceuticals. Including more active enrollment of patients that mirror the insights and needs of diverse populations and communities, to ensure clinically meaningful results are sought.

I believe diversity must take a central role throughout the product life cycle, from start to finish. Considering factors such as gender, age, race/ethnicity in the beginning of product design is key. Collecting data on these important factors to then characterize the results based on these factors is crucial for safety and efficacy. Lastly, communicating the results of disaggregated data provides evidence for making informed decisions. Diversity embedded into the entire process is needed to maintain public trust in science and patient trust in product development.

Thanks for your collaboration, Dr. Dooley! Look forward to the panelists ideas today and throughout this discussion.

Thank you for your moderation Dr. Dooley! Excited for this discussion.

Yes, a warm welcome to you too Dr. Dooley, and thank you!

Hi Dr. Dooley, excited to read what this illustrious group of women have to say on this important topic! Thank you for moderating this discussion.

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Thank you Dr. Dooley. Really excited to join this much needed conversation!