Duke CTSI Launches New Center Dedicated to Equity in Research

Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute has launched the Center for Equity in Research to address the profound challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning that unfolded during the summer of 2020. These challenges highlighted, among many things, a common thread around equity in health and research that has been a CTSI priority for years.

The new center is led by Nadine J. Barrett, PhD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Duke University. She holds a joint senior leadership role as the Associate Director of Equity and Community and Stakeholder Strategy for the Duke Cancer Institute and the Duke CTSI. A medical sociologist by training, Dr. Barrett is a health disparities researcher, expert equity strategist, and a nationally recognized leader in facilitating community/stakeholder and academic partnerships to advance health equity, as well as developing training and methods to address implicit bias and structural and systemic racism that limit diverse participation in biomedical research.

The vision for this new Center is to provide leadership, guidance, and resources to improve equity and thwart bias and racism in research. The Center will operationalize CTSI’s longitudinal strategy to fully integrate equity at every level. This strategy applies an equity lens to existing services and infrastructure and will evolve as new initiatives and projects are launched and expanded.

Planning for the Center for Equity in Research was already underway before the devastating events of 2020 prompted CTSI to quickly deploy a more organized initiative to integrate equity throughout the institute by creating the Equity in Research (EIR) core in July 2020. This core, led by Keisha Bentley-Edwards, PhD, and Dane Whicker, PhD, is focused on elevating, advancing, and accelerating equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist research.

The EIR core is at the heart of the work of the Center for Equity in Research. The new Center will leverage the recent work of EIR to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity throughout the research enterprise at Duke. Important work last summer included the design of an assessment tool measuring the perception of anti-bias, anti- racism, and equity, with CTSI staff and leadership participating in a multi-part survey. Since then, the survey has been refined and shared with Duke leadership as part of a broader, campus-wide equity assessment initiative.

Initial Center priorities under Barrett’s leadership will focus on creating accountability to ensure an anti-biased, anti-racist, and equitable research enterprise; developing and providing tools and resources to promote anti-racism, anti-bias, and equity for faculty, staff, and learners; providing consultations and resources to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in biomedical research studies within the CTSI and across the Schools of Medicine and Nursing, as well as other Duke entities; and reframing constructs around bias and race in research with interdisciplinary teams across Duke and our broader community.