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Improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in randomised trials

Edited by:

Shaun Treweek, PhD, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Kamlesh Khunti, PhD, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Shoba Dawson, PhD, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Tianjing Li, PhD, University of Colorado Denver, United States of America

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 30 June 2025 
 

Trials is inviting submission of manuscripts, long and short, including original research and education articles (but not protocols) for best practice in ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion in randomised controlled trials.

Well-designed randomised trials are an important way to improve health and social care outcomes and population health. These benefits are not, however, shared equally: that trials and care provision under-serve some in society is now undisputed (see here for examples of under-served groups). The challenge for those designing trials is how to make future trials more equitable, diverse and inclusive.

The aim of this Collection is to create a body of evidence that assists trialists in industry and academia in designing, conducting, analysing, interpreting, and reporting randomised trials with an equity lens, ultimately promote fairness in healthcare outcomes and advance health equity. We are less interested in demonstrating inequity– acceptance of that is the starting point for the Collection. What we would like to see are practical strategies to make trials more equitable, diverse, and inclusive, from the selection of research questions, choice of study populations, to various methodologies that possess the potential to account for diverse populations and address their unique susceptibilities in the design and conduct of trials. 

We especially welcome articles offering suggestions for how to incorporate consideration of intersectionality (such as ethnicity and socioeconomic disadvantage) into trials, as well as articles written by authors working outside academia, or based in low- and middle-income countries. Articles presenting rigorous evidence of strategies and methodologies that improve recruitment and/or retention of one or more under-served groups would be of great value to the Collection. While not all research is explicitly focused on equity, most research can be designed to promote equity more effectively.

Image credit: © Robert Kneschke / stock.adobe.com

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Well-Being and SDG 5: Gender Equality.

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection invites submission of manuscripts, long and short, including original research and education articles (but not protocols) for best practice in ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion in randomised controlled trials. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Please note that Trials does not consider articles on complementary or alternative medicine

Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Editorial Manager. Please select the appropriate Collection title “Improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in randomised trials" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.