How You Can Improve Black Representation in Clinical Trials With a Few Clicks

Clinical trials are crucial for testing new drugs and medical treatments, but a lack of demographic diversity among trial participants can lead to dangerous knowledge gaps. In a recent interview on the National Minority Quality Forum‘s For Your Health podcast, Dr. Andrew Friedson from the Milken Institute highlighted the need for better representation in clinical research. The lack of public data The key issue, according to Friedson, is the lack of publicly available data on who is enrolled in trials. “We really don’t have a good grasp on where or even if we have a problem within clinical trials,” he explained, because the government website ClinicalTrials.gov lacks comprehensive demographic details. “Only about half of the trials that are registered on clinicaltrials.gov upload their results or have up-to-date uploading. And then of those half that upload them, only about another half includes any demographic information beyond gender of the participants.” This data blind spot is deeply concerning from both an ethical and scientific perspective. As Friedson stated, “If you have treatments that have different types of presentation based on some demographic factor…and your clinical trial isn’t capturing that population that has a different effect of the treatment, then you’re going to...