Katherine (Kathi) Ridley-Merriweather, PhD (she, her), is the Communication and Recruitment Manager for the Biospecimen Collection and Banking Core at the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Ridley-Merriweather is an applied scholar whose research broadly focuses on the inclusion and recruitment of Black and Brown individuals into cancer clinical trials. Her personal research passions are focused on the recruitment of women from minoritized populations into breast cancer prevention research studies, particularly the Komen Tissue Bank.
Dr. Ridley-Merriweather’s expanded research interests include: prevention in breast cancer contexts, persuasive health message design, communication-focused minority outreach for universal recruitment to medical research, disparities in cancer research, and culturally oriented communication barriers and motivators. Recent work emphasizes the need to increase the motivations and self-efficacy of Black and Brown individuals toward clinical trial participation through normative-focused messaging. Dr. Ridley-Merriweather is a health communication scholar and the author of several journal publications, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries.
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