Patients Most In Need Face Obstacles to Participating in Life-Saving Clinical Trials According to a New Milken Institute Report
24 Junio 2024 - 8:30AM
Business Wire
The report is part of the think tank’s expanded
work to increase access to and diversity in clinical trials
Clinical trials can provide the possibility to obtain novel
treatments for conditions and diseases that are not yet
commercially available. Yet, these lifesaving treatments are often
difficult or impossible to reach due to the physical distance to
the clinical trial site. This is especially true for people in
rural parts of the country. That’s according to a new report by the
Milken Institute, Distance as an Obstacle to Clinical Trial Access:
Who is Affected and Why It Matters.
The report highlights how clinical trials, which predominate in
major metropolitan areas on the coasts, are often far away from the
patients who would benefit the most from participation, leading to
poorer health outcomes. The report’s authors map the highest
prevalence locations for certain diseases and chronic conditions
that are also prohibitively far. These high-prevalence, low-access
locations are high-priority places for innovations such as
decentralized clinical trials.
“Very few Americans are ever approached to participate in
clinical research studies and this report demonstrates that the
lack of sufficient infrastructure creates a major gap in our
ability to engage research participants in all the places where
they live, work, shop, and get their care,” said Esther Krofah,
executive vice president of Health at the Milken Institute.
The report explores the distribution of clinical trials and
includes an accompanying interactive map, highlighting data that
shows where distance is prohibitive to access to clinical trials.
The footprint of distance as a barrier differs from disease to
disease, even when diseases have similar nationwide prevalence.
“This report provides detailed, actionable intelligence on where
to deploy trial resources such that they will make large
improvements in terms of patient access,” said Andrew Friedson,
director of health economics at the Milken Institute, a co-author
of the report. “We highlight where trials are not, and where
high-prevalence populations are. Put those together and you have
your highest return locations if you are trying to knock down
distance as a barrier to access.”
For example, there are large clusters of counties with high
prevalence of diabetes but also a large travel distance to the
nearest clinical trials in New Mexico and Appalachia. A similar
cluster exists for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in
Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Increasing representation of those who
live far from clinical trials has an equity component as well:
places far from clinical trials have higher poverty rates, lower
rates of health insurance, and a larger proportion of their
population is civilian veterans than places that are close to
clinical trials.
“This means that solutions that improve access will need to be
customized to the locations and the populations that they serve,”
added Friedson.
The new report is part of a broader effort by the Milken
Institute FasterCures to increase access to and diversity in
clinical Trials. The think tank with partner organizations recently
released Toward a National Action Plan for Achieving Diversity in
Clinical Trials and launched Enabling Networks of Research
Infrastructure for Community Health through Clinical Trials
(ENRICH-CT), a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on driving
dialogue and advancing practical solutions for ways the public and
private sectors can support more infrastructure in the US for more
inclusive clinical research.
ENRICH-CT has already grown to include more than two dozen
founding members across academia, government, nonprofit, and
private industry. Several founding members were in attendance today
at the EY, Yale + Bioethics International’s Annual Pharmaceutical
Executive Roundtable on Bioethics, Social Responsibility, Health
Equity + the Role of Pharma: Metrics for Success, where Krofah
participated in a panel discussion, highlighting the newly released
report and how its findings reinforce the work of the ENRICH-CT
partnership.
“Through our ongoing work at FasterCures and ENRICH-CT, we are
finding new ways to partner, collaborate, and help forge solutions
to prevent diseases and improve health outcomes,” said Krofah.
“This report supports these efforts, where we are advancing a path
forward to a national clinical research infrastructure that serves
the needs of the future, and a demographically diverse population
in the US.”
More information about FasterCures, ENRICH-CT can be found here
or by writing to ENRICH-CT@milkeninstitute.org.
About the Milken Institute
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank
focused on accelerating measurable progress on the path to a
meaningful life. With a focus on financial, physical, mental, and
environmental health, we bring together the best ideas and
innovative resourcing to develop blueprints for tackling some of
our most critical global issues through the lens of what’s pressing
now and what’s coming next. For more information, visit
www.milkeninstitute.org.
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Paul Guequierre Email:
pguequierre@milkeninstitute.org Phone: (202) 249-6942