Minorities continue to be vastly underrepresented in clinical trials, prompting state officials to step up efforts to boost trust and education in the research.
“There are a host of factors which interfere with the underserved and diverse communities participating,” said Dr. Claudia Baquet, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of the school’s Center for Health Disparities and Research.
Minority patients tend to fear clinical trials and distrust the research, Baquet said, and physicians hesitate to encourage participation due to potential costs to the patient.
Baquet announced Thursday the start of a program called MPACT — Maryland Program Advancing Clinical Trials — which aims to build partnerships among the community, physicians and the industry.
By researching and tracking trial participation, officials want to see where the state should focus efforts to boost minority enrollment.
Clinicians and health officials gathered Thursday at a forum in Baltimore hosted by the medical school to discuss ways to bridge that gap, calling for more community involvement and funding for recruitment into trials.
“We have to work together,” said Worta McCaskill-Stevens, director of the Community Oncology and Prevention Trials Research Group at the National Cancer Institute.
The number of black cancer patients in Maryland who participated in federally funded trials fell by 8.9 percent to 17.8 percent between 1999 and 2002 — while the overall number of patients participating rose 1 percent to about 3 percent, according a recent study by Baquet.
Clinical trials study the effectiveness of new approaches to treatment. The lack of minority participation makes it harder to develop treatments.
Many patients don’t know what a clinical trial is, and only about 5 percent of patients said their doctors discussed clinical trials with them, Baquet said.
However, federal attempts to address trial disparities have not been effective, said Dr. Garth Graham, deputy assistant secretary for minority health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Those attempts only focus on federally funded trials, and 80 percent of trials are industry-funded, he said.
Officials should work to enhance public awareness of trials and ensure insurance companies cover trials — those are just a few of the 33 policy recommendations offered by researchers at the Eliminating Disparities in Clinical Trials project at Baylor College of Medicine.
Armin Weinberg, head the project, said at the forum, “There is something everybody can do.”
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