Black and Hispanic/Latino communities experience disproportionate chronic pain and are underrepresented in pain research. Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) are promising tools for pain management. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that research using these tools engages underrepresented communities to make research findings more generalizable and reach all who may benefit. Lack of diversity in the research workforce itself is a key barrier to improving Black and Hispanic/Latino representation in pain research, and video-enhanced recruitment and consenting may be a useful tool to better engage minoritized communities. Using community participatory research principles in an iterative process, we engaged key stakeholders, including neuromodulation researchers and minoritized community members, to create and test informational videos on taVNS and TMS. These videos were designed for Black English-speaking, Hispanic/Latino Spanish-speaking, and Haitian-Creole speaking people with chronic pain. Study 1 involved iterative feedback from stakeholders to develop test videos, which were then refined based on community member input. Study 2 was a pilot randomized controlled trial assessing the impact of these videos on participant expectations for pain relief with taVNS. Results indicated that the videos were well-received, and there was no significant difference in expectancy scores between those who viewed the videos and those who received traditional brochures. This suggests that while videos may improve engagement, they do not unduly influence expectations, potentially making them valuable tools for improving research participation in underrepresented populations. These videos will be freely available to help researchers to engage people from minority communities.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

NCT05896202

This project was supported by the National Institutes of Health National Center of Neuromodulation for Rehabilitation (NIH/NICHD Grant Number P2CHD086844) and by the Miami Clinical and Translational Institute (NIH/NCATS Grant Number UL1TR002736). The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH, NICHD, or NCATS.

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Ethics committee/IRB of the University of Miami gave ethical approval for this work.

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All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors