Table 7 Quotations for the theme of ‘Overlapping research ethics and health equity issues’

Inequitable burden of research

…most of the research has happened in in the public sector if we are honest with each other. And is that fair ethically in terms of the burden of research, and therefore, what is the right of that participant or that grouping, that community post-trial? (REC3)

I've seen where we could… have been participant advocates in this process (REC14)

Equity in research agendas

From an equity point of view within the research environment, I think that investigators who have big organisations that can absorb this slowness, were able to move forward and to utilise this opportunity to find a niche to find spaces, I think that smaller units would have struggled and, and especially postgraduates would have struggled (REC1)

We tried to be equitable. But we had to make very hard decisions around the research agenda within the institution (REC17)

Inequities in access

From an equitable point of view, despite the fact we in a pandemic, there are a lot of gaps in research in other vulnerable populations (REC4)

You could suggest that that in some of the prevention studies, some of the participants that weren't being researched, directly, may have been able to benefit, because they're high risk and may have been absorbed into prevention studies… it's hard to know if that occurred. But equity got lost a little bit, I think in this pandemic (REC15)