Making clinical trials more diverse

Various players in the healthcare industry unite to launch ‘I’m In’ campaign

Jeff Inglis
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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hoping to expand both statistical validity of clinical trials and access to experimental therapies beyond their current confines, major medical-industry players have united to launch a campaign called “I’m In,” encouraging minorities and their doctors to find out about, and participate in, clinical medical-research trials.
 
While encouraging African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and members of other ethnic groups to join medical research, speakers at a March 12 press event announcing the initiative were cognizant of the shadow of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, an unethical and long-condemned study of the spread of untreated syphilis in African-American men that ran from the 1930s to the 1970s.
 
While Dr. Carlos Cardenas, board chairman of Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg, Texas, alluded more vaguely to the idea of “removing any and all stigma that is associated with being part of a clinical trial,” another speaker, Averl Anderson, a breast-cancer survivor and participant in clinical trials, mentioned Tuskegee by name as a reason “people have a lot of mistrust in medical research”—particularly in the African-American community, she said.
 
But they and others representing a range of partners in the new campaign stressed the importance of broadening participation.
 
“These breakthroughs do not happen on their own,” said John Castellani, president and CEO of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, but rather rely “very heavily on volunteer participation in clinical trials.”
 
Years of work by the pharmaceutical industry to increase diversity in trials have not borne the hoped-for fruit: “African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics are still dramatically underrepresented in clinical trials,” he said.
 
As Castellani said, “the future of medicines is going to be aimed more and more at genetically homogeneous populations,” which means drawing more from minority populations to properly test drugs—especially those aimed at diseases those populations suffer from disproportionately.
 
For example, prostate cancer is twice as fatal for African Americans as Caucasians, according to material distributed in advance of the campaign kickoff—and yet only 4 percent of prostate-cancer clinical trial participants are African American. Cancer is the top cause of death for Asian Americans, but just 2.8 percent of cancer trials patients are Asian American. And despite the higher prevalence of diabetes in the Hispanic population, only 1 percent of all trial members are Hispanic.
 
Based on early glimpses, the campaign is centering on personal connections to family members and the wider community of each minority group. A video promoting the effort included lines like “It’s not enough to wait for someone else to act” and “We all have a responsibility to each other and future generations.”
 
Gary Puckrein, president and CEO of the National Minority Quality Forum, noted that by 2020, more than half of Americans will be members of groups now called “minorities,” leading him to argue that “underrepresentation of minorities affects everyone.”
 
He said this is a campaign to help test “medicines for a biodiverse America.”
 
Cardenas offered an example: When he started practicing medicine, there was just one medication for hypertension; he noticed, though, that it didn’t work the same in people with Hispanic backgrounds as it did in those with non-Hispanic heritage.
 
“How are we to know how our patients will respond to these medications?” he asked. “It’s something we should not leave to chance.”
 
Anderson, for her part, said she is a five-year breast-cancer survivor. She was diagnosed in 2009 with stage three, triple-negative cancer, “a very aggressive form of breast cancer that’s common in African-American women.” Her doctor suggested she participate in a trial, which she credits with her survival.
 
That’s another key element beyond encouraging individuals to participate, said Dr. Ho Luong Tran, founding president and CEO of the National Council of Asian Pacific Islander Physicians.
 
“As physicians we must recognize our role as trusted healthcare providers,” she said. Doctors “owe it” to their patients to “share all possibilities” for treatment, including clinical trials. She said more than two-thirds of Americans report being likely to join a clinical trial if their doctor suggests it, but only 22 percent of people say they have had such a conversation.
 
Citing statistics that 38 percent of Hispanics, 36 percent of Asian Americans, 33 percent of African Americans and 42 percent of non-Hispanic whites say doctors have the greatest impact and the greatest responsibility to talk about trials and research, Tran called on her fellow doctors to learn about, support and encourage their patients to join trials. “If we don’t talk to them about clinical research, few others will,” she said.
 
Puckrein said the website for I’m In, at www.JoinImIn.org has options to register as a member of the public, an interested doctor, and even as a trial researcher, to allow all three groups to connect with each other more efficiently.

Jeff Inglis

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