Advancing Equity and Inclusion in Microbiome Research and Training

Abstract

This article proposes ways to improve inclusion and training in microbiome science and advocates for resource expansion to improve scientific capacity across institutions and countries. Specifically, we urge mentors, collaborators, and decision-makers to commit to inclusive and accessible research and training that improves the quality of microbiome science and begins to rectify long-standing inequities imposed by wealth disparities and racism that stall scientific progress.

Twenty Important Research Questions in Microbial Exposure and Social Equity

“…It is also imperative that we advance equity and inclusion in microbiome research and training. Foxx et al recently proposed ways to improve inclusion in microbiome science, advocating for resource expansion to enhance capacity ( 252 ). The authors urged mentors, collaborators, and decision-makers to commit to inclusive and accessible research to correct the inequities imposed by structural socioeconomic disparities involving wealth, class, and race.…”

Perspective: Leveraging the Gut Microbiota to Predict Personalized Responses to Dietary, Prebiotic, and Probiotic Interventions

“…Technologies that enable cost-effective, accurate, and comprehensive systems-scale data collection on human populations, such as the expanding diversity and availability of wearable devices and smartphone-based applications ( 86–88 ), will provide greater insight into the causal mechanisms that underlie how the microbiota mediates personalized responses to dietary, prebiotic, and probiotic interventions. Finally, it is important to decrease the costs and logistical hurdles of these precision approaches to increase the representation of indigenous, nonindustrialized, and rural populations in microbiome research so that the societal benefits of precision nutrition and healthcare are more equitably distributed ( 22 , 66 , 89 ).…”

“…In this context, it is incumbent upon researchers to collect more evidence from well-designed, hypothesis-generating human observational studies and hypothesis-testing experimental intervention trials where dense phenotypic, clinical, and behavioral information is combined with gut microbiome profiling. Furthermore, it is unclear whether or not precision nutrition models trained on relatively affluent developed-world cohorts are broadly applicable to the rest of the world, necessitating a sharper focus on running observational and interventional trials in indigenous, nonindustrialized, and rural populations ( 22 , 66 , 89 ).…”

Designing the Microbes and Social Equity Symposium: A Novel Interdisciplinary Virtual Research Conference Based on Achieving Group-Directed Outputs

“…Institutions can easily review applicant, candidate, hire, and promotion demographic data to understand employee success [57], but it may be difficult for institutions to identify the source of barriers without forcing former employees to disclose personal or professionally sensitive information which can subject them to further professional backlash. Instead, institutions can find best practices for equity and inclusion through published research and conversations with the relevant scientific community [58][59][60].…”

“…Not only does this obscure trends in data and imply that race is responsible for dictating differences in microbiomes or overall health [62], but it can be used as a fake biological justification for discriminatory legislation or outright genocide [63][64][65]. Scientific training currently favors reducing biological diversity down to narrow, quantifiable categories, that are presented without interpretation which could be construed as speculation, but we must change our training if we want to prevent this winnowing of context down to one-dimensional factors [23,24,60,66]. Institutions can support this training towards context-aware microbiome research by prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion not only as a broader impact outcome but as a primary focus of the experimental design.…”