The participation of minorities in published pediatric research

There is extensive documentation that minority adults are underrepresented in medical research, but there are scant data regarding minority children and their parents.

All full-length articles published in three general pediatric journals between July 2002 through June 2003 were collected and reviewed. Articles were excluded if they did not include at least one U.S. researcher, all subjects enrolled at U.S. institutions, parents or children as subjects, some prospective data collection, or between eight and 10,000 subjects. Corresponding authors were surveyed to clarify race/ethnicity data, language barriers and how race/ethnicity data were collected.

Two-hundred-twenty-eight articles qualified for further analysis. Black children and parents and Asian/Pacific Islander parents were overrepresented, and Hispanic children and parents were underrepresented compared to the Census data. Most researchers collected race/ethnicity data by having subjects self-report. Most studies did not have translation available, although most Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander subjects were enrolled in studies in which translation was available.

Our data show that Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander research subjects are more likely to participate in pediatric research when translation is available. If the goal is to ensure access to pediatric research for all ethnic populations, then more research needs to accommodate non-English-speaking participants.