In her piece for the Times of Israel blog, Darcy Grabenstein, a member of Hadassah’s Greater Philadelphia Chapter, discusses the need for diversity in medical research. As someone who works in the clinical trial space, she pays attention to the fact that people of different ethnicities, genders and races can react differently to treatments. For example, the researchers in charge of the four-decade-long Tuskegee Study, which followed the progression of syphilis in Black men, provided no treatment to the study’s participants, resulting in the death of more than 128 men. The wives of nearly 40 of them also contracted the disease and 19 babies were born with it. Today, we see that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected ethnic and racial minorities, especially the Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaska Native communities. Historically, women, too, have been underrepresented in clinical trials; in 1977, the FDA banned women of childbearing age from the early phases of clinical trials. The ruling was reversed 16 years later. A 2015 study on alcohol use and Addyi, the first drug approved to treat female sexual dysfunction, included 23 men and two women. Grabenstein believes in Hadassah because of its push to raise research money for studies that focus on women’s health. “One reason I’m so passionate about Hadassah is its own cutting-edge research at the Hadassah Medical Organization’s hospitals in Israel,” she says. “With decentralized clinical trials becoming the norm rather than the exception, we need to increase access to all, regardless of race, ethnicity, geographic location or socioeconomic status.”
Darcy Grabenstein is a member of the HADASSAH WRITERS’ CIRCLE, a program of Hadassah’s Media & Public Relations Office that offers Hadassah’s volunteer leaders, members and professional staff a way to share their thoughts and feelings about Hadassah’s work in the United States and Israel.