Towards Health Episode 4: Divergent Diversity

Divergent Diversity: Where the world is headed with health equity and diversity in clinical trials and bringing drugs to market.

‍In a recent industry survey published in Fierce, data was identified as the biggest barrier to acting out health equity initiatives, followed by budget and guidelines or governance. Nearly half of respondents did not know if they collect race, ethnicity or language data on their care population, and more than half did not know if they have this data on their workforce.

‍About 4% of respondents had this data on the bulk of their population and 8% had it on their workforce. A diverse workforce is critical to improving inequities among patients, the report said.

‍Of those surveyed, nearly half don’t provide culturally and linguistically appropriate care, and only provide care in English. More than half do offer care in other languages, but it is largely ad hoc. Not offering care in other languages affects patient understanding and comfort, as well as the quality of care.

‍These same principles apply to recruiting a diverse population of clinical trial site investigators and patients. Listen to H1’s Director of Product Marketing, Alexandra Moens, PharmD; and Adam Wyckoff, Sr. Director of Product Management on H1’s Towards Health podcast discuss:

• What they see in working with clients at H1 as the biggest barrier to reaching diverse patient populations for clinical trials.
• How trust of physicians and investigators within communities and drug companies factor into this and social determinants of health.
• How data can mitigate or begin to combat this challenge when it comes to clinical trials or with bringing drugs to market.