Objectives/Goals: To explore the caregivers’ lived experiences related to facilitators of and barriers to effective primary care or neurology follow-up for children discharged from the pediatric emergency department (PED) with headaches. Methods/Study Population: We used the descriptive phenomenology qualitative study design to ascertain caregivers’ lived experiences with making follow-up appointments after their child’s PED visit. We conducted semi-structured interviews with caregivers of children with headaches from 4 large urban PEDs over HIPAA-compliant Zoom conferencing platform. A facilitator/co-facilitator team (JH and SL) guided all interviews, and the audio of which was transcribed using the TRINT software. Conventional content analysis was performed by two coders (JH and AS) to generate new themes, and coding disputes were resolved by team members using Atlas TI (version 24). Results/Anticipated Results: We interviewed a total of 11 caregivers (9 mothers, 1 grandmother, and 1 father). Among interviewees, 45% identified as White non-Hispanic, 45% Hispanic, 9% as African-American, and 37% were publicly insured. Participants described similar experiences in obtaining follow-up care that included long waits to obtain neurology appointments. Participants also described opportunities to overcome wait times that included offering alternative healthcare provider types as well as telehealth options. Last, participants described desired action while awaiting neurology appointments such as obtaining testing and setting treatment plans. Discussion/Significance of Impact: Caregivers perceived time to appointment as too long and identified practical solutions to ease frustrations while waiting. Future research should explore sharing caregiver experiences with primary care providers, PED physicians, and neurologists while developing plans to implement caregiver-informed interventions.

Exclusion of special populations (older adults; pregnant women, children, and adolescents; individuals of lower socioeconomic status and/or who live in rural communities; people from racial and ethnic minority groups; individuals from sexual or gender minority groups; and individuals with disabilities) in research is a pervasive problem, despite efforts and policy changes by the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. These populations are adversely impacted by social determinants of health (SDOH) that reduce access and ability to participate in biomedical research. In March 2020, the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute hosted the “Lifespan and Life Course Research: integrating strategies” “Un-Meeting” to discuss barriers and solutions to underrepresentation of special populations in biomedical research. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how exclusion of representative populations in research can increase health inequities. We applied findings of this meeting to perform a literature review of barriers and solutions to recruitment and retention of representative populations in research and to discuss how findings are important to research conducted during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight the role of SDOH, review barriers and solutions to underrepresentation, and discuss the importance of a structural competency framework to improve research participation and retention among special populations.