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WOMEN'S HEALTH Conference Points Up Need for More Minority Women in Clinical Trials On March 9, the Center of Excellence in Women's Health at HMS held a conference on challenges and solutions to recruiting minority women into clinical trials. Shiriki Kumanyika, professor of epidemiology and associate dean for health promotion and disease prevention at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, gave a keynote address about some of the difficulties of being a minority woman researcher who is often pigeonholed into representing one group or the other. Kumanyika said that clinical research, which often overlooks women and minorities as research subjects because they introduce variation, should follow the premise that "studying people who are different will get us to the answers more quickly." The conference featured panels with both community and research perspectives to discuss the best strategies for including minorities and women in research trials and the barriers that keep them from being recruited. Bobbie Drake Saucer, president and cofounder of the Women of Courage Support Organization and a lupus sufferer, talked about her experiences reaching out to other lupus patients and educating herself about medical research. "The majority of us didn't know about clinical trials," she said. "We didn't have a clue." Many of the speakers discussed the difficulties researchers have of establishing trust within minority communities and the need to establish relationships and work closely with community groups on study design. Ming Hui Chen, HMS instructor in medicine and associate director of the Noninvasive Cardiac Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital, urged researchers to "treat the community as scientific collaborators." In the afternoon, participants broke into groups to brainstorm solutions for diversifying clinical trial recruitment. Suggestions included financial compensation to alleviate child care and transportation costs, focus groups to improve study design, recruitment of more women and minority investigators, and a task force to coordinate efforts throughout the Medical School. —Courtney Humphries