Coalition For Clinical Trials Awareness Releases Campaign Model To Raise Public Awareness About Clinical Trials

Clinical Trials Awareness Week highlights need for federal awareness campaign to increase enrollment in clinical trials

The Coalition for Clinical Trials Awareness (CCTA) released a campaign model for raising public awareness about clinical trials and the need for more participants. The campaign, which was released as part of Clinical Trials Awareness Week (#CTAW2016), includes a mock public service announcement, mock advertisements designed for magazines and subway stations, and sample social media messages. Under the tagline “For all the people in your life,” the campaign model illustrates how the clinical trials awareness message might convey to video, media and social networks.

Clinical Trials Awareness Week, which runs May 2-6, is co-hosted by CCTA. The week’s activities include a Twitter chat at noon EDT on Thursday, May 5, and roundtable discussions hosted by Quintiles in North Carolina, Kansas, and Ohio. On Monday, CCTA released a white board video entitled “Stalled Clinical Trials: The Awareness Solution.” The video outlines how a federally-supported public health awareness campaign can increase participation in clinical trials, similar to how the “Share your Life. Share your Decision.” campaign in the1990s increased organ donations.

All activities aim to raise public awareness about clinical trials and the need for greater participation.

Clinical trials are an essential step in getting medications approved by the FDA and onto pharmacy shelves for patients. Currently, there is a severe shortage of clinical trial participants, which slows the process of approving medications and moving them to market for patients. One study reported that 11% of clinical trials fail to enroll even one participant.

Consequently, many groundbreaking, life-saving medications remain stuck in the approval pipeline. With increased participation in clinical trials, however, patients and care providers will have greater access to approved medications.

The Coalition for Clinical Trials Awareness is a nonprofit group of health care providers, patient advocates, medical researchers and industry and government stakeholders working together to increase public awareness about the importance of clinical trials participation.

For more information, visit http://cctawareness.org/clinical-trials-awareness-week/.