Engaging Historically Excluded Women in Health Research: Addressing Intersectional Barriers to Advance Equitable...

Diverse and inclusive patient recruitment in health research is essential for addressing health disparities and ensuring generalizability of findings. However, recruiting underrepresented populations remains a persistent challenge due to barriers such as language, cultural differences, sociohistorical factors, and technological limitations.

Utilizing an intersectional lens, this paper presents recruitment strategies and lessons learned from engaging a diverse, multilingual postpartum patient sample in qualitative health research.

Key strategies to address intersectional barriers included the following: (1) Responding to Participant Needs, (2) Utilizing a Multilingual Research Team, (3) Ensuring Social Identity Congruence among Team and Participants, (4) Cultural Humility Training, (5) Engaging Advisory Board Collaboration, (6) Utilizing Provider-Facilitated Referrals, (7) Addressing Technological Barriers with Flexible Digital Platforms, and (8) Using Text Messaging for Outreach.

By applying an intersectional lens, this study expands upon existing recruitment approaches, offering a contextually relevant framework for advancing equitable participation in health research. Including those most impacted by health disparities in research is an ethical imperative, necessary for producing findings that reflect the experiences of historically marginalized communities and ensuring they are meaningfully represented in scientific inquiry.