Cultural Safety in Clinical Research: A Conceptual Overview and Call to Action

Abstract

Black Americans are two to three times more likely to develop ADRD than their white counterparts, yet Black Americans make up only 2.4% of ADRD clinical trial participants. Here we provide an overview of the current state of initiatives to maximize racial and ethnic inclusivity in clinical research, particularly among ethnoracialized groups, and introduce the Indigenous-rooted concept of cultural safety through an integrative review and outline of its applicability to the research context. Cultural safety ensures that cultural identities, values, and experiences of minoritized persons are respected, understood, and integrated in their health care journey, empowering them to define and evaluate their own experiences. Implementing cultural safety challenges individuals to confront and critically examine their own perspectives on the dominant culture's traditions and values, as well as their implicit racism, biases, privileges, and inherent power structures. We extend prior conceptual work on cultural safety by proposing two subdimensions: environmental and internal. These must be synergistically integrated to heal fractured relationships between communities of color and researchers. By championing cultural safety, we can create a workforce of self-aware researchers who embody cultural safety's true essence as defined by the communities they serve. Community-engaged research serves as an ideal platform for cultural safety to be meaningfully implemented and sustained. This approach can uplift previously silenced voices in research, build long-term relationships, and generate empirical data that substantiates its positive effects. Importantly, applying environmental and internal cultural safety can empower participants in ADRD research where it is critically needed.

Keywords: Community engagement; Health equity; Inclusive research practices.

Figure 1.

Visual representation of cultural safety. Environmental and internal cultural safety work together synergistically to create full cultural safety in a research setting. The individual components listed within the circle are nonexhaustive, as different research settings and institutions may need additional components to foster cultural safety.