Raegan Durant, M.D., MPH, associate professor in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Preventive Medicine, is the senior faculty winner of the Dean’s Excellence Award in Diversity Enhancement.
Since joining the faculty in 2006, he has led numerous research projects at UAB to examine factors that contribute to minority underrepresentation in clinical research, focusing on developing programmatic interventions aimed at helping both potential minority study participants as well as health care and research personnel engaging in study recruitment. He is the principal investigator on a five-site consortium study to explore the use of patient navigation to increase minority participation in cancer clinical trials, and is building on the that work to examine minority participation in oncology personalized medicine studies to ensure that this burgeoning area of scientific discovery yields benefits that are applicable to all groups.