I had the privilege of growing up in the city of Chicago,
where possibly the one thing I enjoyed about my large urban high school was the
intensive exposure to people from different cultures. I had friends whose
parents had recently immigrated from China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and India
(one of the perks of high school geekdom is that I became an honorary Asian).
My high school organized a huge, two-day festival every year called “International
Days,” where different school clubs showcased their culture’s food, music, and
dance. (Even though I am old, I was happy to see that there is still an “International Days”
event at the school, apparently right before Lane-a-Palooza). These experiences
opened my eyes to the variety and depth of different multicultural groups and
showed me how little I knew about the experiences of different racial and
ethnic minorities.
In the past week, I’ve come across a number of articles
about efforts underway to increase inclusion of people of color in clinical
trials, both as patients and investigators. I even stumbled across a mention in
an article
in Nature , which my
science geek friends tell me is practically
biblical.
In 2008, Eli Lilly launched an initiative to increase
efforts to enroll minorities in clinical trials. Since then, Lilly reported
that they’ve initiated more than 400 minority clinical trial sites across the
country (more on the initiative here).
More recently, at the AACR conference on The
Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the
Medically Underserved, the American Association of Cancer Research
presented results from a new culturally sensitive computer-based
video ad (Technology and research? Drool!). The video more than doubled Latina breast cancer
patients’ awareness of and interest in clinical trial participation.
It is a mistake to assume that clinical trial results
gathered from Caucasian patients generalize to all people. A recent JAMA
letter highlighted how clinical
trial patients in cardiovascular studies are not representative of real world
patients. Patient
recruitment experts must ensure that they are joining pharma companies and
research organizations in their efforts to close the diversity gap in clinical
trial research. Ensuring patient recruitment tactics reach minority audiences,
overcome language barriers, and communicate the benefits of study participation
are all essential steps to building multicultural participation in clinical
trials.
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