Wright is a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and director of the clinical hypertension program at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.

He’s spent nearly four decades recruiting African-Americans in clinical trials, where minorities have been underrepresented.

Wright says those efforts are important because conditions like high blood pressure disproportionately affect minorities.

“Many of these diseases like hypertension are epidemic in the African-American community, and there are differences in the way diseases present in African-American’s, and lastly, in studying population differences, you not only benefit the populations at risk, but also the wider population.”

While more minorities are represented in hypertension and other studies, Wright says African-American researchers leading clinical trials are still grossly underrepresented.