Baghdadi, drawing on her work with parents worldwide through KenzandMom, argued that research often feels culturally distant from families' values and unclear in its community benefit. She recommended involving parents before data collection, including in shaping the research questions themselves.

Dr Garcia noted that studying underrepresented populations is more time- and resource-intensive (e.g. building a language corpus from scratch) and highlighted reviewer bias: researchers working outside the US reported that findings diverging from US-based results are more likely to be questioned on methodological grounds rather than treated as genuine variation.

Professor Essau described how developmental assessment tools are built in the West and may not translate meaningfully elsewhere — for instance, her indigenous Malaysian language has no word for "cognition," complicating adaptation of cognitive behavioural therapy. She also described a two-year delay publishing a trial protocol paper because an editor insisted that baseline testing occur simultaneously across all schools.

Dr Henriques observed that bias in genomics stems less from recruitment barriers than from researchers repeatedly defaulting to Northern European datasets, which perpetuates misinterpretation in clinical care and reinforces communities' sense that the science and healthcare system are "not for them."

Professor Essau shared that even when researchers try to hand ownership of research questions to local collaborators, communities may defer back ("you are the educated one, tell us what to do"), reflecting an ingrained top-down mentality that requires active, ongoing effort to shift toward bottom-up research design.

Dr Gehdu described her PhD research on face processing in autistic individuals, which found that some emotion-recognition difficulties were better explained by alexithymia than autism. She contrasted this rigour with the field's broader pressure toward speed and low cost, which favours easily reached (largely white) samples and creates systematic blind spots in generalisability.

Dr Gehdu noted that researchers, particularly in quantitative or lab-based fields, often underestimate the power they hold over participants. Meaningful inclusion means meeting communities where they are and co-framing research questions with them from the outset, rather than entering and leaving without genuine engagement.

Dr Henriques described three different approaches from her career: embedding herself in community spaces (museums, schools, archives) throughout her PhD; the Black Health Legacy project, which partners with roughly 38 community organisations from inception; and her work at Genomics England, which joins existing community-led projects and asks how genetics research can support questions the community has already prioritised.

Professor Essau recounted testing a mental health intervention with young people excluded from mainstream schools, who fell asleep in early sessions. A focus group revealed lifestyle factors (late nights, poor diet) behind this; co-designing changes with the young people and teachers (adjusting the programme length to fit school terms and disseminating via TikTok rather than papers or posters) led to strong engagement and almost no dropout.

Dr Garcia pointed to the shortage of training pathways for research careers in under-resourced fields and countries (e.g. no psycholinguistics programme in the Philippines), describing a free annual summer school she co-runs for students in the Global South as one small step toward diversifying the researcher pipeline itself.

Baghdadi stressed reframing recruitment as partnership-building. Parents are highly protective of their children (she described being questioned online about study safety after posting about bringing her own baby to a lab) and need simple, non-academic explanations of safety and purpose, plus "closing the loop" by sharing results afterward.

Dr Gehdu described an Ealing HDRC project training local residents to lead research on health inequalities that matter to them. She emphasised that genuine partnership is defined by who makes decisions and informs the research direction, not merely by inviting community members to sit alongside academics.

Dr Henriques described Black Health Legacy's approach of repeated, informal presence in community settings (e.g. at a leisure centre's swimming lessons) rather than one-off data collection visits, arguing that this ongoing physical presence, not a single interaction, is what builds the trust needed for participation.

Baghdadi recommended that researchers partner with already-trusted platforms (children's centres, councils, parenting platforms like KenzandMom, social media influencers) rather than building trust and awareness from scratch, as a practical way to save time and resources while reaching underrepresented families.

Dr Garcia advised citing research on understudied populations and languages, being explicit in publications about which populations findings generalise to, and, as reviewers, questioning the unconscious assumption that non-English or non-US samples are inherently less generalisable than the default

Professor Essau urged researchers to be bold and persistent, describing her own past difficulty publishing large, well-funded trials with no significant effect. She cited the large UK-wide MYRIAD mindfulness study as evidence that null findings are becoming more publishable and advised trying multiple journals rather than giving up after rejection.

Dr Henriques discussed how statistical and labelling choices (e.g. broad categories like "Black" or "African ancestry") can obscure nuance and cause harm, and how authorship order, data access, and funding negotiations reflect power imbalances between collaborators. She noted that the ability to push back (e.g. on unrealistic project timelines) tends to grow with seniority and separately warned that researchers can also harm trusted communities by disappearing after a project ends, damaging community leaders' credibility.

Dr Gehdu acknowledged that early-career researchers have limited institutional power, but argued that direct engagement with the communities they study, rather than a deficit-focused lens, builds valuable reflexivity and a fuller appreciation of community strengths and resilience.

Responding to a question from an early-career researcher trained in biological approaches, Professor Essau described a genetic study in which participants viewed saliva sampling as removing part of the soul, requiring careful explanation within consent processes. Dr Henriques described using critical race theory in her PhD to examine how genomic researchers make decisions about grouping and terminology, noting the continued use of outdated racial language in publications, and argued that addressing this embedded social and historical bias is a matter of scientific rigour, not only ethics.

When asked about experiences with ethical review, Dr Garcia described shifting to obtaining ethical approval locally in the Philippines, which better anticipated community concerns (e.g. about coercive compensation), and relayed colleagues' account of an inflexible Dutch ethics process that frightened refugee participants with lengthy consent forms. Professor Essau described adapting delivery of a substance-use intervention in Indonesia including home visits and staff wearing plain clothes in the evening to work around stigma, despite institutional constraints on where interventions could take place.

On communicating early or correlational findings to parents without overstating certainty, Baghdadi suggested offering both the full academic report and a clearly labelled, simplified summary noting its preliminary nature. Dr Henriques recommended focusing feedback on what matters most to participants rather than full technical detail, using varied formats (school talks, exhibitions, public events). Dr Gehdu stressed being upfront early about what researchers can and cannot offer, and Dr Garcia described giving participants immediate practical value during testing itself (e.g. language-stimulation brochures, free assessments) rather than waiting years for final results.

When asked how to avoid exploiting community members hired in place of traditional research assistants, Dr Garcia described a Philippines project training community members in transcription and digital skills that outlasted the study and improved participant retention compared to hiring urban students. Professor Essau pointed to a train-the-trainer model that has trained over 26,000 practitioners worldwide, contributing to wider societal impact (including, she noted, changes in how mental health is treated under the law in Malaysia). Dr Gehdu described how short-term community placements can benefit both parties and lead to further collaboration, citing a lived-experience consultant who progressed to a funded research hub.

In response to a comment about institutions treating diversity, equity, and inclusion as a tick-box exercise, Dr Henriques shared her own experience of professional isolation as the only Black genetic counsellor in the country and later, in South Africa. She described grounding herself in her own values, building community both outside and within institutions, prioritising self-care, and naming racism explicitly and repeatedly as an ongoing act of resistance.

Responding to a question submitted online about sharing power through dissemination, Baghdadi described receiving a brief, meaningful update from ADHD research she had participated in. She argued that sharing findings promptly and accessibly, even preliminary results via social media, helps participants feel their contribution mattered, rather than waiting years for a result.