A Neuroscience Project Pushes To Include More African Americans In Brain Research

African Americans and other underrepresented minorities make up only about 5% of the people in research studies.

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Mental illness can run in families. And Dr. Kafui Dzirasa grew up in one of these families.

His close relatives include people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. As a medical student, he learned about the ones who’d been committed to psychiatric hospitals, or “went missing” and were discovered in an alleyway.

Dzirasa decided to dedicate his career to “figuring out how to make science relevant to ultimately help my own family.”