Explore five top strategies to improve diversity in clinical trials, from community engagement to flexible trial designs, with insights from biotech and pharmaceutical consulting firms in Boston.
In this article, we discuss the five best practices to enhance diversity in clinical trials, providing actionable insights for stakeholders from the perspective of biotech consulting firms in Boston and others.
Outreach and Community Engagement
Increasing access to clinical trials starts with the engagement of diverse communities. Reaching out to underrepresented populations, building trust and awareness can make a large difference in recruitment.
Engage local partners: Work with community organizations and leaders to connect with prospective achievers.
Culturally relevant education: Create educational resources that connect with the cultural values and language of the target community.
Clear communication: Explain the intent, advantages, and disadvantages of clinical trials to demystify the process and foster trust.
Flexible Trial Designs
For many, the rigors of trial design may hinder their willingness or ability to participate. More flexible approaches can facilitate inclusion in clinical trials of a wider breadth of participants.
Decentralized trials
Leverage telemedicine and local healthcare providers to minimize the amount of travel participants need to do.
Adaptive designs: Enable changes based on interim findings to facilitate a more diverse patient population.
Flexible visit days/times/locations to ensure that participants can be scheduled to participate.
Limiting the eligibility criteria of the intervention tends to exclude many eligible participants, especially minorities who may have a concomitant disease.
Expand Eligibility Criteria: Create trials with low entry barriers regarding the lack of medical background.
Evidence from the real world: Feed data with heterogeneous populations into eligibility criteria tables.
Focus on Health equity: Ensure eligibility criteria do not unintentionally leave out disadvantaged groups.
Partnerships with Expert Biotech and Pharma Contract Research Firms
Diversity in clinical trials can increase with expertise provided by consulting firms. BioBoston Consulting, Boston biotech, pharma, and life science consulting firms are at the forefront of devising creative new approaches to increase trial diversity.
Strategy development: Collaborate to build targeted employment strategies
Leverage analytics: Use high-dimension analytics to assess the associated disparities across-of-site unnatural trial participation disparity
Regulatory insight: Take advantage of consulting companies’ experience with navigating regulated areas and compliance.
Advocacy and Regulatory Support
Pushing for policies that promote diversity in clinical trials will result in systemic changes good for everyone.
Partner with lawmakers: Collaborate with legislative institutions to create policies that require clinical trials to include a diverse patient population.
Regulatory compliance: Comply with regulations from agencies such as the FDA, which increasingly stress on the importance of a diverse trial population.
Join industry coalitions: Work with other organizations to advocate for sector-wide changes in support of diversity.
Conclusion
Increasing the diversity of clinical trials is not just an ethical obligation, but an important scientific need. With a focus on community engagement, flexible trial designs, inclusive eligibility criteria, collaborations with consulting firms, and policy advocacy, these five strategies can help us move toward trials that reflect the populations they hope to serve.
Yes, together we can make clinical research more democratized, equitable and finally more beneficial for everyone.
Get in touch with BioBoston Consulting or explore our website to find out how we can help you and your organization.
