Don’t limit diversity to just representation in clinical trials

Having a diverse workforce is so much more than just a tick in a box. It can have huge benefits for your company both internally and externally, work wonders for patient recruitment AND as a result you’ll help pave the way for everyone to be represented in clinical trials — talk about three birds, one stone

So, here are 3 areas of clinical trial recruitment that could benefit from the workplace being more diverse.

#1 Who sees patient recruitment materials before they are published?

Creating patient recruitment materials in different languages, ensuring websites consider user accessibility, and offering varied content formats can all help to improve diversity in clinical trials, as can using diverse stock imagery. But one of the best ways to think about the different ways to make clinical trial materials accessible and authentically diverse, is to make sure you have a varied team looking over your recruitment materials. Having diverse perspectives in the workforce here can really help to pinpoint and highlight any nuances in your materials before they go out.

So, try making sure your teams include members that are women, identify as LGBTQ+, are in ethnic minority groups, and are of all ages, to name a few. The more varied perspectives you can get, the better.

#2 Who does community outreach?

While not technically workforce, community leaders, patient advocates and opinion leaders play an important role in reaching and engaging patient groups and minority populations. These people will be sharing education on what clinical trials are, why they are conducted and why diverse populations are needed. When these communities are being educated on clinical trials, it’s most effective when the information is coming from someone they trust.

So, ask yourself: who is doing the community outreach for your clinical trial? Is that team made up of a diverse group of people?

#3 Who is at the clinical trial site?

One of the most important roles of being an investigator in clinical trials is to build rapport with patients. Creating that environment where a patient feels like they can trust and get along with site staff will mean patients are more likely to engage and enroll onto the study. Research has found that ethnic minorities are significantly underrepresented as clinical investigators, and in turn, this drastically impacts the number of ethnic minority participants.

So, all in all, diversity in clinical trials isn’t just reserved for those actually taking part in the trial. It encompasses everyone involved, from participants, to community leaders, to agencies, to clinical trial investigators.

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