 The exclusion of certain populations from biomedical research has been a long-standing issue, despite efforts and policy changes by the NEA and other organizations. This exclusion is often due to social determinants of health, SDRH, which limit access and ability to participate in research. To address these issues, the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute held a UN meeting in March 2020 to discuss barriers and solutions to underrepresentation of special populations in biomedical research. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for more inclusive research practices, as it showed how excluding representative populations can lead to increased health disparities. We performed a literature review of barriers and solutions to recruiting and retaining representative populations in research and discussed how findings are relevant to current research being done during the pandemic. We also emphasized the importance of a structural competency framework to improve research participation and retention among special populations. This article was authored by Madison N. LaCroy, Lindsay N. Potter, Karen Bandean-Rosh and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.