Leaving no-one behind in Research

Impoverished populations are often excluded from health research to protect them from harm. Yet, these are often competent adults who have the most to gain from health research, as they are likely to carry a high burden of disease and have limited access to health care. If they were able to contribute more to the design and conduct of research, better solutions for problems in resource-poor settings might be found. We will build a research agenda with three aims. First, we want to rethink the concept of vulnerability in non-clinical health research. Second, we want sex workers and indigenous peoples to define what vulnerability in research means for them and how they want to overcome it. Third, we want to develop a research method in the medical humanities, to gain valuable knowledge from vulnerable populations with reduced risks of harm (e.g. from privacy breaches) compared to standard methods.