Redressing past wrongs: changing the common rule to increase minority voices in research.

Numerous diseases disproportionately affect African Americans across socioeconomic, age, gender, and geographic groups. Despite the need for research into these disparities, African Americans are often underrepresented in research. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study receives much of the blame for this problem, but other contributing factors have also been identified. To date, government policies seeking to increase African American participation have had limited success, and recently proposed changes to the Common Rule do not address this problem. Therefore, we have proposed 3 changes: treating racial minorities as vulnerable, requiring community consultation in minority research, and increasing minority representation on institutional review boards. Coupled with other efforts, these changes could help increase minority representation in researching health disparities.