Original Investigation

Gender Diversity of Research Teams and Clinical Trial Enrollment

JAMA Network Open 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.37667

October 16, 2025 at 11:00 AM EDT

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Are clinical trials led by women principal investigators more likely to recruit women as clinical trial participants?In this cross-sectional analysis of 10 708 trials, 29.2% had a woman principal investigator. After adjusting for potential confounders, mean enrollment of women in trials with a woman principal investigator was 54.1% compared with 46.9% for trials in which the principal investigator was a man, a statistically significant difference.These results suggest that inequity in clinical trial enrollment, particularly the underenrollment of women, is an ongoing concern in biomedical sciences.

Corresponding Author: Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, 180 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (jena@hcp.med.harvard.edu).

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