Funding Diversity Where It Starts — At the Site

By Dan Schell, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader

I’ve learned that the clinical trials world is smaller than it looks. Case in point: A few months ago, I hosted a Clinical Leader Live session titled Diversity In Clinical Trials: Is DEI Dead? — and yes, that headline got exactly the reactions you’d expect.

During the event, someone named Dr. Bryce Palchick — a retired family physician who continues to conduct clinical research — left a thoughtful comment in the chat. Interesting perspective, I thought. Fast-forward to the SCRS conference, and I ran into him in person. Total coincidence. Then at the ING conference? At that point, it felt like I was either being stalked or the clinical trials gods were nudging us together. I’m glad they were. Palchick is one of those people who reminds you why this work matters.

Those hallway conversations turned into something more concrete: Palchick mentioned a grant program he was involved in, and that led me to reach out to the folks behind it — Tafoya Hubbard, program manager for the diversity & inclusion site grant; and Sophia McLeod, advocacy advisor at ACRO. And that’s how I ended up learning way more than I expected about a bold experiment that helps shift diversity efforts at sites from buzzwords to budgets.

The Problem ACRO Decided To Take On

ACRO — the Association of Clinical Research Organizations — isn’t a group you’d normally expect to run grants for sites. Their membership is CROs and technology companies. But in 2020, ACRO launched its Diversity and Inclusion in Clinical Trials Committee with a mission to support real, operational change. And by 2023, the committee had a clear target: support community sites directly.

Why? Because that’s where the diversity problem actually lives.

Sites often serve the very communities sponsors claim they want to reach. Yet sites are asked to do more outreach, build more trust, and expand more representation — without the budget to hire the people, forge the partnerships, or even travel to the neighborhoods where the patients live. It’s like being asked to grow your garden but being told water costs extra. (For a good example of a site that was proactive on this issue, check out my interview with Ammara Mushtaq, MD.)

According to Hubbard, ACRO’s Board opened the door by offering to fund a project that could be best solved collectively. “We wanted to work on something that would benefit the entire ecosystem,” she explained. “The D&I Committee saw this as a chance to address a real bottleneck — the study and site budget. We figured this project would be a way to go directly to the heart of the issue.”

The result was the Diversity & Inclusion Site Resource Grants Program, launched in 2024 as a pilot year. Grants of $25,000 or $50,000 were offered to U.S. community-based research sites to pursue 12-month initiatives aimed at improving representative enrollment.

And the interest? Pretty good. Sixty-five sites applied.

How The Winners Were Chosen

ACRO’s steering committee reviewed and scored each application, interviewed top candidates, and narrowed the field to a final seven:

• Brooklyn Clinical Research
• K2 Medical Research
• Nebraska Cancer Specialists
• Preferred Primary Care Physicians
• Randomize Now
• SmartCures Clinical Research
• Superior Clinical Research

“We needed applicants to already be running clinical trials,” Hubbard told me. Beyond that, ACRO prioritized diversity in geography, patient demographics, and health-care settings — rural, urban, and everything in between.

The projects that didn’t make the cut weren’t bad ideas (e.g., many focused on infrastructure improvements or culturally focused events), but they simply weren’t directly tied to recruiting and retaining underrepresented participants in industry-sponsored trials. And that direct impact on enrollment was non-negotiable.

Dr. Palchick’s Crusade For Early Engagement

As a family physician, Palchick spent his career treating the very people our industry too often overlooks. Even in retirement, he continues to run clinical research because he believes in giving his patients access to better care and better medicines. But he’s also painfully aware of how late in the game diversity is typically addressed.

During feasibility discussions, sponsors would ask how he planned to enhance diversity once a trial opened. His response was uncomfortably honest: “It’s too late.”

Recruiting a patient into a clinical trial requires trust. Trust takes time. Time requires money. And money rarely comes before the study does.

While conveying this concern to a sponsor he was working with, his contact suggested Palchick write an investigator-sponsored protocol involving a social intervention rather than a medication intervention and then submit for a grant for that. So, he did. In fact, he spent a year working on it. But after he submitted it, he found out he was denied. “I went back to them and said, ‘I understand it's competitive, but please tell me exactly why I got denied.’ And the person said, ‘Well, it's simple, we don't give grants for that.’”

Undeterred, he pitched it to other sponsors, but they didn’t bite either. Why? No obvious ROI.

That experience reinforced a painful truth: The industry publicly advocates for diversity, but dollars still flow to the projects with the fastest path to a publication or approval.

When ACRO launched this grant program, he saw the opening he had been waiting for. His Pleasant Hills site near Pittsburgh, PA proposed hiring a full-time community liaison, someone who reflects the local population, knows its concerns, and can meet people where they are.

Finding that person wasn’t simple. Palchick partnered with UpTrials and Black Women in Clinical Research (BWICR) to help recruit candidates. “Both companies were very helpful and accommodating,” he told me. “Ultimately, it was BWICR who put us in touch with Diamond Ricketts, whom we were able to hire because of the grant. This was an important and difficult step in our process.”

Ricketts is now a clinical research assistant who serves as both relationship-builder and trainee coordinator. Together, they have been creating intentional, regular presence in Clairton, a predominantly Black, economically challenged community southeast of Pittsburgh.

They host “Ask the Doctor” tables at local food banks twice a month. They attend community leadership meetings. They talk about hypertension, diabetes, and the basics of clinical research. They bring listening ears, not enrollment forms.

Before this pilot, Palchick’s site had enrolled only three Black participants across multiple past studies. That is the baseline ACRO will measure against during monthly check-ins.

Progress may be incremental — but it’s real.

Measuring Success Without Losing The Plot

This is where I give ACRO credit: they’re asking the right questions. What specific activities lead to participation? What is the timeline for trust? And which interventions create lasting change?

The pilot isn’t just funding good intentions; it’s generating data. ACRO plans to publish a white paper documenting outcomes: what worked, what didn’t, how much it cost, and how long it takes. And they’ll use those findings to determine whether the grant program becomes permanent.

That decision is partly financial. As McLeod told me, “Depending on the sources of that funding, it’s possible we would need to set up a foundation to run this effort. But all of that is still in flux, and a final decision won’t be made until after we’ve reported out on the findings of this pilot year.”

Translation: If the industry wants more diversity, the industry might need to help pay for it.

Why This Could Become The Model

I’ve covered dozens of diversity initiatives in recent years, and they often fall into three categories: PR talking points, regulatory compliance, or outsourcing the problem to sites without giving them a dollar more to solve it.

ACRO’s program rejects that. It is grounded in a simple thesis: Representation doesn’t grow in spreadsheets — it grows in communities, through people.

If these pilots succeed, they could chart the exact investment strategy sponsors have been pretending to search for.

And if they don’t? At least ACRO is building evidence of what doesn’t work, instead of letting everyone repeat the same mistakes with a more cheerful PowerPoint.

Either outcome is progress. And I’m grateful I met Palchick, because sometimes the right person at the right food-bank table can change the math for an entire community.