Including under-served populations in research - PE
Jan 31, 12:55 PM
I think that one of the key learnings from the pandemic was the differential effect of the pandemic on populations that we hadn’t really appreciated as being what we call underserved populations,.. populations… with ethnic diversity or deprivation, but also significant illnesses like learning disability for example where there were some phenomenal impact of Covid in that group of patients with a single condition... I think that’s a game-changer really for us in the NIHR but also for NHS England as well, and the way forward will really be trying to address those inequalities of care, but also of outcome, and that’s the legacy I think of the pandemic. We particularly want those patients to be involved in research because pre-pandemic, and even still now, there is a tendency for people going into research to not be in those underserved populations, and hence the results of that research may not necessarily apply to the high risk underserved populations.