New Campaign from The Trial for #ClinicalEquality – “Worth Less” –Spotlights the Cost of Clinical Inequality
Retrieved on:
Montag, Mai 20, 2024
“While there has been progress among clinical trial sponsors since we launched in 2020 – with many influential partners joining us to bring this conversation to some of the largest stages in the world – there’s still more work to be done, particularly as we look at the full burden, or cost, that a lack of diversity in clinical research has.”
Key Points:
- “While there has been progress among clinical trial sponsors since we launched in 2020 – with many influential partners joining us to bring this conversation to some of the largest stages in the world – there’s still more work to be done, particularly as we look at the full burden, or cost, that a lack of diversity in clinical research has.”
Based on the National Academies report, health disparities in heart disease, hypertension and diabetes and the resulting mortality, morbidity and loss of work will cost society more than $5 trillion through to 2050. - Better representation in clinical trials would lead to reductions in these health disparities, which would save all US taxpayers billions of dollars.1
When clinical trials are not inclusive, clinical trial sponsors fail to acquire vital scientific data from a diverse patient population, which could lead to important discoveries for the broader population.1 For instance, PCSK9 inhibitors, a class of cholesterol-lowering medicines expected to hit a $2 billion valuation in 2030, owe their discovery in part to diverse clinical trials. - In Black patients, scientists discovered a variant of the PCSK9 gene that is associated with lower cholesterol and as a result identified this gene as an important target for treatment.2,3
Patients of color are disproportionately impacted by diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and yet poorly represented in clinical trials for those conditions. - 4–7 For example, 0% of clinical trial participants are Native American, yet diabetes hits their communities the hardest, depriving at-risk groups of life-improving and/or life-saving therapies, which increase the disease burden on their families and communities.4,5
A lack of diverse representation in research further degrades trust among underrepresented groups and healthcare professionals and has the potential to further worsen healthcare disparities.8,9 More than 70% of physicians in the US are being asked a question by their patients that they cannot answer for all: Will this new medicine work in people like me?9