Accelerating clinical trial diversity

In Danny Buckland’s article this month, he looks at the importance of accelerating clinical trial diversity, emphasising that diversity shouldn’t be an afterthought – it’s an investment in the credibility of scientific endeavour.

As Danny says: “The need to remove outdated barriers has been highlighted in order for health equity to become a reality rather than a distant hope. The FDA’s draft guidance, Diversity Plans to Improve Enrollment of Participants from Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Subgroups in Clinical Trials, recommends that sponsors of medical products develop and submit a Race and Ethnicity Diversity Plan to the agency early in clinical development.

“It is a gear change, but the scale of the diversity hill climb is framed by research from patient-centric data analytics company Phesi, which analysed the more than half a million patients that participated in US cancer clinical trials over the past 15 years and discovered that 42% of US cancer trial cohorts did not include African-American patients and 48% had no Hispanic-American patients.” Read more on page 30.

In our article by Volker Koscielny, Chief Medical Officer at Almirall, he talks about the importance of remaining vigilant about skin checks, the prevalence of actinic keratosis in the UK and the steps that are being taken to increase people’s knowledge about this condition. Read more on page 20.

Our article from specialist healthcare consultancy Executive Insight looks at the five ‘innovation areas’ driving success in chronic diseases and how “doing the groundwork is key, understanding the key unmet needs in the context of the current patient pathway and the potential value the product could bring”. Read more on page 24.

Looking ahead, our October issue will focus on achieving launch excellence in a post- pandemic market. If you would like to make your voice heard on this topic, please get in touch at sales@pmlive.com

I hope you enjoy this issue!

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