According to Dr. Suki Balendra, Director of the North West London Clinical Trials Alliance: “North West London covers a population of 2.6 million people, half of whom come from a diverse background. We’re passionate in our belief that everyone has the right to receive the same level of healthcare and the opportunity to access and participate in research regardless of background. Patient diversity in clinical trials has long been a topic of discussion within the research community. Disease and illness of course do not discriminate, but our age, race and ethnicity do play a part in determining how conditions affect us. The lack of diversity in trials is a real obstacle to understanding the safety and efficacy of novel therapies across different populations which is vital to advancing equity. Joining the Advancing Inclusive Research Site Alliance will promote partnership between the NHS, research and Industry and present a tremendous opportunity to cultivate and sustain clinical trial diversity.”
CRN WM is the largest of 15 local Networks across England with an economically and ethnically diverse population of around 5.9m. CRN WM is focused on health and social care research and aims to improve community outreach as well as Equity, Diversity & Inclusion across the West Midlands.
Professor Matthew Brookes, Clinical Director of CRN WM commented: “We serve a large, diverse population with a number of underserved communities in terms of health and social care research access. This opportunity to collaborate with our life science sector partners will help us start to address these inequalities and to improve access to health and care research for those populations. This collaboration will complement workstreams underway at CRN WM which are looking to tackle research inequalities and to enhance access to opportunities in research”
The Advancing Inclusive Research® Site Alliance plans to expand to more research centers in the near future. Each center joining the Alliance will focus on enabling the participation of historically underrepresented patient groups in clinical trials, working collaboratively to share key learnings and exploring innovative ways of increasing clinical trial access for every patient who might benefit. The ultimate goal is to build a robust and sustainable clinical research ecosystem that actively includes diverse patient groups.
Richard Erwin, General Manager, Roche Products Ltd, added, “Representation of real-world patient populations is critical to improve clinical outcomes and ensure health equity for all patients. The recruitment of people from minority ethnic groups is a pressing concern for researchers and the research community. Roche is committed to overcoming these disparities and addressing barriers to clinical trial participation across all patients and groups. We recognise we cannot drive the change alone and through the Advancing Inclusive Research Site Alliance we’re partnering with highly experienced and trusted research centers located in areas with significant patient diversity. Programmes such as this one are vital in helping us enhance the future designs of our clinical trials and ensure greater inclusion and better access to all of our clinical trials.”
Advancing Inclusive Research is vital as not all segments of the population have benefited from advances in science and medicine. There are well characterised disparities in clinical and genomic research, distinct populations have been understudied in science, underrepresented in research, and underserved by medicine while, enough data representative of real world patient populations is lacking preventing effective clinical outcomes for all patients
The creation of this Alliance in the UK is matched by the creation of an Alliance in Canada and follows on from an AIR Site Alliance in the United States.
