Including Multicultural Participation in Clinical Trials: Clinical Trial Research Needs Its Own “International Days”

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.