Integrating Research into Community Practice — Toward Increased Diversity in Clinical Trials

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Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has underscored health inequities affecting racial and ethnic minority and other underserved communities in the United States, highlighting, among other critical needs, the importance of increasing the diversity of participants in clinical trials. Clinical trials provide evidence of medical products’ safety and effectiveness (or lack thereof). Physicians’ ability to extrapolate from trial results to their own patients would be dramatically improved if a trial’s participants reflected the product’s intended patient population as accurately as possible. Yet in 2020, industry-sponsored clinical trials that supported Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of new molecular entities and original therapeutic biologics included 8% Black or African American, 6% Asian, and 11% Hispanic or Latino participants.1