This post originally appeared at Univision Contigo website.
Despite numerous health advances in recent years, there is still an urgent need for increased minority representation in medical research. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Research Program has made a commitment to diversity, especially to those who have been excluded from medical research for years. With this focus on diverse communities, the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) is proud to serve as an official partner of All of Us.
My personal dedication to health equity is lifelong. I developed a passion for health care when I was in high school, volunteering at the Beverly Hospital in Montebello, CA, where my mother worked as a nurse. I spent many hours in the halls of that hospital, delivering mail and flowers and spending time with patients. These encounters are probably long forgotten by the individuals I met, but the overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude I was exposed to turned my volunteerism into a career dedicated to serving others.
My career path took a turn when I realized that, in order to create real change in our nation’s health care system, I needed to get involved in the policies driving it. I saw a desperate need for inclusion and was limited in what I was able to do. One of the greatest challenges we face in health care today is the shortage of minority physicians, but an equally important area is the lack of minority representation in medical research.
As an organization that, for over two decades, has represented the interests of 50,000 licensed Hispanic physicians working with communities that have been traditionally underserved and underrepresented in medicine, NHMA is highly concerned that Hispanics and people of color continue to face significant heath disparities.
In representing these physicians, we regularly hear their concerns about their inability to customize care when their patients have not been included in research that informs treatment in the U.S. We must do better in preparing them for all situations with treatment and prevention strategies developed with their patients’ individual needs in mind.
All of Us will call on one million or more participants to share their health information, creating a database that will help doctors identify and treat disease more quickly and precisely based on a patient’s background, lifestyle, environment and genetic makeup. In committing to diversity, the program has set the goal of ensuring 70-75 percent of participants come from populations historically underrepresented in medical research – populations that include the Hispanic community. In its efforts to recruit Hispanic participants, NIH has made all program materials and resources available in both English and Spanish, and provides Spanish-speaking advisors to answer any questions potential participants may have.
By advancing precision medicine through programs like All of Us, we’ll begin to break down the barriers causing the health disparities our community currently faces and help strengthen quality care for future generations.
We at NHMA are excited to participate in the All of Us Research Program, which opened to the public on May 6. We hope you will join us in this groundbreaking effort. With broad support from our community, we can ensure that this program has a positive impact not only on the Hispanic community, but on our country as a whole.
To learn more about the program and how you can get involved, please visit joinallofus.org .