Walmart's Healthcare Research Institute Is Ready To Aid Underserved Communities
By Ed Miseta, Chief Editor, Clinical Leader
On October 10, 2022, Walmart announced its Healthcare Research Institute (WHRI) with the mission to improve care for underserved communities. WHRI offers the opportunity for patients in rural and underserved communities to participate in clinical research.
Dr. John Wigneswaran, Walmart’s Chief Medical Officer, notes WHRI will focus on innovative interventions and medications that have the potential to make a difference in underrepresented communities including older adults, rural residents, women, and minority populations.
A Focus On Needed Treatments
Once that engagement happens, WHRI hopes to focus on those studies that will have an impact on those populations. According to Wigneswaran, those therapeutic areas would include diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, among others. WHRI believes it needs to focus on those areas it is customers will benefit the most from.
“This focus will also allow us to push our pharmaceutical partners on the appropriate protocol design to include those individuals,” adds Wigneswaran. “We are trying to close a gap that we know exists in the current research ecosystem and use our strengths to improve them.”
While other recent entrants into the clinical space, notably CVS and Walgreens, are also jumping into the conduct of decentralized clinical trials (DCTs) and the generation of real-world data (RWD), WHRI is going to approach clinical research one step at a time. The first phase of the effort will be recruitment of patients in underserved areas. That is also the area of clinical trials where WHRI believes it can have the biggest impact.
“Recruitment is something that will really differentiate us,” says Wigneswaran. “Our engagement levels are much higher than what is currently being seen in the industry. I think a lot of that is related to the fact that we do have a very deep relationship with our customers. Once a patient becomes involved with a study, we are sensitive to messaging them the way they prefer to be messaged. Finally, once the study is complete, we can learn the results of the study, follow the patient, and improve their care.”
Wigneswaran states WHRI will get involved in other aspects of clinical trials that fit its footprint, notably DCTs and the ability to take trials to patients wherever they might be. This is especially true in those rural and economically disadvantaged areas. He notes the difficulty faced by many patients in getting to clinics to receive a study drug or to receive a follow-up evaluation. Although the conduct of DCTs will be a later phase project of WHRI, it is something already being discussed and evaluated.
“Our pharmacies can be a place where patients can get that study drug and where consultations and evaluations can be conducted,” says Wigneswaran. “It is a place where they can have a consultation with a pharmacist as an expanded scope of practice. That will likely be a phase 2 project for us. Right now, our focus is on making sure patients have the option to participate in a clinical trial.”
A New Focus On Equity
Walmart has been involved in the health and wellness space since the 1970s. In the last 50 years, the company has had multiple engagements with pharma. Many new additions to the WHRI team, especially in the past year, have backgrounds in research and clinical studies. In recent years, the company has begun to focus on the types of tools that will ultimately help customers and drive equity and engagement in research. Research is now a large and growing aspect of that tool kit.
“We believe our ability to reach patients will extend across almost all disease states and therapeutic areas,” states Wigneswaran. “We have 150 million people who visit our stores each week. We also have a robust database containing insights from our pharmacy and information patients have shared with us, and which also includes medical diagnosis codes. That makes us perfectly suited to locate appropriate patients for a study. Even in the rare disease space, which will be a huge focus for us, we have been successful in identifying patients for those studies.”
Although WHRI will collaborate with all partners, including pharma companies, CROs, and academic medical centers, Wigneswaran notes there has been a strong desire on behalf of sponsor companies to work directly with Walmart. He believes that is due to the company’s ability to locate the right patients for a study. This approach also allows WHRI to get involved in trials much earlier, including the ability to influence protocol designs. For example, a study on obesity, which covered a wide swath of patients, involved recruiting patients from across the country. While a pharma company might be trying to figure out where study sites should be, WHRI can look at its patient population and know exactly where the patients are located.
WHRI is already achieving promising results. Wigneswaran notes the company is demonstrating referral rates that are three times the industry benchmark. Although WHRI was just announced in October, the organization has been collaborating with sponsors and CROs since early 2022. Wigneswaran states a high percentage of surveyed customers were familiar with the term clinical research and more than half expressed a high interest in learning more about them.
“We did not approach customers asking them to take part in a specific trial,” he adds. “We mentioned there was a new drug under development that might help them or their family. We asked if they would like to learn more about it and had interactions about the treatment and the role of clinical research. Those discussions eventually led to deeper conversations about specific studies that patients could take part in, and how they could help with specific conditions. We have already engaged thousands of patients. It has been refreshing to see the amount of trust patients have in us and our ability to help them improve their health.”