Access To A Diverse Patient Population Can Solve Clinical Research's Diversity Challenges

Increasing diversity in clinical research has consistently been a challenge. Despite increased public awareness of this issue and repeated efforts to remedy it, clinical trials still do not adequately represent the U.S. population.

Researchers recently performed a study in which they looked at the diversity data and recruitment methods of 100 NIH-funded cardiovas­cular trials posted on ClinicalTrials.gov between 2000 and 2019. The study, published in Journal of the American Heart Association, discovered that 46% of the trials enrolled less than 25% Black participants, despite Black patients being more vulnerable to heart disease.

These studies paint a very clear picture: the current clinical research system is sure to fail underrepresented patients.