MedSoc 2022 – “Race to Recruit” special event

Earlier this month, I – along with colleagues Andy Smart, Kate Weiner, Francesca Sobande and Lijiaozi Cheng – presented work from a new project that’s beginning to explore the ways that ‘race’ gets understood in different biomedical recruitment projects, focusing specifically on covid-19 vaccine recruitment strategies (namely, the ‘celebrity’ endorsement video).

As part of what we framed as a special event at this annual conference – the biggest Medical Sociology even in the UK, the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology Conference – I also presented the latest paper from the project, which was recently published. We also feature work, presented by Heidi Gardner, from the INCLUDE project. We had a great discussion about ideas of ‘trust’, and how medical sociologists can engage in debates around recruitment to think critically about what we mean when we speak about ‘a community’ and what we do when we seek to ‘target’ it for recruitment.