CLEVELAND — University Hospitals has a new mobile clinical research unit which officials hope will lead to more diversity in clinical trials.

​A customized 38-foot Winnebago is equipped with a range of medical equipment.

“We have a centrifuge to process all the blood,” said Dr. Grace McComsey, vice president of research for University Hospital.

The bus will be used to teach communities in northeast Ohio about research trials and make them less intimidating.

“They’re very strict with regulations, so we want to give people the real sense, a realistic view of what research is, to scare them less because it’s really very important to participate in clinical trials,” McComsey said.

UH researchers have thousands of medical studies in the works, but it can be hard to get a diverse pool of volunteers to take part.

“African Americans, Hispanics, tend to not enroll enough in clinical trials, so you end up with some medications that are tried on only white males., for example. Well, women may have different side effects than men, African Americans may have different side effects or even different efficacy,” McComsey said.

University Hospitals' Mobile Clinical Research Unit program is meant to increase convenience for participants in clinical trials.

“It’s a huge hurdle for clinical research. Why would (people without transportation) even think about enrolling in research. It’s too inconvenient and I understand that, so when you go to them, take the bus to where patients reside, it’s way more likely that they enroll in a clinical trial.”

Studies can vary from HIV research to diabetes testing and everything in between.

“Pretty much 75-80% of the trials at UH can be done on this bus,” McComsey said.

So if you see the mobile research unit near you, they just ask you to do one thing: “What we want them to do when the bus stops and they’re there . . . come and talk to us and say, 'what do you have? Tell me, what is research?'"