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DE&I

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1rem

Daejin Abidoye, head of solid tumors, oncology development, AbbVie, discusses:

Industry’s greatest challenges in reaching diverse patient populations

Podcasts

Daejin Abidoye, head of solid tumors, oncology development, AbbVie, discusses a number of topics around diversity in clinical research including industry’s greatest challenges in reaching diverse patient populations, personalized treatment methods, recruitment strategies, and more. 

Reaching Diverse Patient Populations With Personalized Treatment Methods

Outdated regulations and inflexible sponsor processes are hampering clinical trial recruitment, but empowering sites with modern, compliant marketing tools could turn the tide.

Obsolete Trial Marketing Guidelines and Missing Processes Hurt Patient Enrollment 

The importance of applying past lessons to align clinical development with scientific advancement.

Science is Moving—Clinical Trials Must Catch Up

Clinical trials face a critical challenge: bridging the gap between patient curiosity and motivation to participate, impacting recruitment success.

The Curious vs. the Motivated: Rethinking Feasibility in the Attention Economy

Improving access while maintaining a high level of research.

Advancing Patient Engagement in Community-Based Oncology Research

The clinical trial industry has a rare opportunity to redefine its role in public health conversations. 

The Gatekeepers Are Gone: What’s Next for Digital Patient Engagement?

In this video interview, Caroline Potts, general manager of sites and patient services at Medical Research Network (MRN), highlights how listening to site insights and adopting flexible models such as temporary community-based clinics, can reduce patient travel burdens, improve enrollment efficiency, and stretch trial budgets further.

How Flexible Site Models Can Cut Recruitment Costs and Timelines

, general manager of sites and patient services, Medical Research Network (MRN), discussed operational flexibility in clinical trials, emphasizing the need to avoid staff burnout due to inflexible SOPs and budget constraints. She highlighted strategies such as in-home visits and community outreach as essential for reducing recruitment delays and improving trial diversity. Potts also touched on budgetary issues as a major barrier to patient-centric models, with a call for better dialogue and innovative solutions. She stressed the importance of community engagement, temporary clinic sites, and collaborative efforts among key stakeholders to better serve diverse populations in clinical trials.

ACT: Given that up to 30% of a trial’s 

 goes to recruitment, how can more flexible site models lead to greater cost-efficiency and faster timelines?

: I think there's a couple of things that I wanted to mention in relation to that. The first is, listen to what your site is telling you. Listen to the patient population that you're looking to reach out to. The site will know their patients better than anyone else. The sponsor and the CRO might know the condition more, they might know the science more, they will certainly know the study better, but the trial sites, you can't get away from the fact that the trial sites know their patients very, very well, and have probably had very lengthy relationships looking after the patients in their community. They will know what the bus schedule is. They will know that patients who live in one end of town, it's going to take perhaps two changes of bus and walking and leaving a really early or late part of the day in order to get to take part in a trial. All of those things matter, so allow the site an opportunity to voice what they think will work.

Then also, when is a site not a site? What about if we really did see patients in their community, what if we were to have a more temporary model of clinic sites in a community that is perhaps in the town hall, that is perhaps in the sports center? Actually, what it means is that everything that is familiar to that community remains in the community. There is still a link with the site and the site team that the patient has always had contact with, but actually it means that they don't have to make that long bus journey, that they don't have to think about carers or having childcare provision or taking time out of work. What about if we really took the trial to the community and were able to set up in that environment? It certainly helps the study budget to go further, and actually, what you find is that patients do like the idea of just being seen in their locality. We live in an age where you can press a button and coffee is delivered, or food is delivered, or whatever your heart desires can be delivered the next day. It's asking a lot now for patients to sign up to something that potentially is two or three years in length and means that they have long distances to travel and long days away from home when that not might not be the easiest thing for them to do.

Videos

In this video interview, Caroline Potts, general manager of sites and patient services at Medical Research Network (MRN), outlines how rigid budgeting and limited sponsor-site dialog often block innovative patient-centric solutions, stressing the need for more collaborative approaches to enable community engagement and flexible trial delivery.

Overcoming Budget Barriers to Patient-Centric Trial Models

ACT: What are the biggest operational barriers preventing sites from adopting more patient-centric trial delivery models?

Truthfully, I think it's the way that the budgets are put together. I'm not trying to say that sites and site staff are all good, and trial sponsors and trial CROs are all bad. It's not as easy as that. That's not what I'm saying here, but I think there is more dialog that could certainly help a site to feel that they can put forward a slightly more unusual solution, like community engagement. That tends to be one of the things that we hear gets knocked out of a budget suggestion and a first iteration of a budget, which is a real shame for the reasons that we've just been talking about. I think that trials are expensive. Trial sponsors, trial CROs, are still on the receiving end of opening sites where there is no recruitment despite best intentions, so we have a bit of an impasse with everyone making really good arguments as to why they can't think outside of the box, but it's that old adage, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got, so we do have to think more laterally and maybe just give it a try. I'm not suggesting throw millions at it when we don't know if something has been tested and has been successful, but the dialog needs to be had, and the discussion should always remain on the table.

In this video interview, Ramita Tandon, chief biopharma officer at Walgreens, outlines her five-year vision for community-based research, calling for deeper industry alignment, infrastructure expansion, and patient-first design principles.

The Future of Clinical Trials in Community-Based Settings

, Ramita Tandon, chief biopharma officer, Walgreens, discussed the company’s three-year milestone of leading clinical trials. Tandon highlighted several of Walgreens’ initiatives in the space, including how its 8,000+ pharmacy locations are bringing research directly into communities. She emphasized the need for community-based partnerships, cultural competence, and education to empower patients. Looking forward, strategic partnerships will be key in enhancing inclusivity and accessibility, with the ultimate goal of bridging gaps in clinical research and public health.

ACT: Looking ahead, how do you see the role of retail or community-integrated sites evolving in clinical trials over the next five years?

That's a great question. Obviously, Walgreens has played a very pivotal role in shaping the future of clinical trials in the last three years by leading the way to demonstrate, not just simply talk about it, but demonstrate how, if you bring research closer to the patients, they will respond. If you spend the time to educate and empower, you make them comfortable, they will respond. They'll more likely want to participate. We also believe that forging strategic partnerships in the industry is best practice. We recognize that we can't do this alone. It's going to require unlocking, at the local level, as well as the national level, so the industry partnerships, whether it's public and private, will be absolutely pivotal and critical to come to the table to shape the future of clinical research. That collaboration is going to be so absolutely critical. Again, it's with regulatory bodies and other key stakeholders. I think, the success of pharmacy-based clinical trials continues to hinge on the sustained, committed strategies that we've put in place around robust infrastructure investment, intentionality, around community engagement, and we're seeing those collaborative efforts proving to be beneficial, and it allows us to overcome challenges such as that skepticism that we've seen in the industry around participation and then logistical issues. You make it easier for patients to participate because it's convenient. It's easier because there's infrastructure that's put in place to allow a pathway for patients to participate. For us, from a retail perspective, we're going to continue to harness the potential of retail settings as we continue to invest as an organization, but our focus continues to be doubling down on the inclusivity and making sure we're providing comprehensive health care solutions for the patients that we serve across the nation, ultimately enhancing public health outcomes and closing care gaps as we see access as a big issue for patients across the healthcare ecosystem.

Vendor Strategy & Collaboration

In this video interview, Ramita Tandon, chief biopharma officer at Walgreens, offers practical insights for sponsors and CROs exploring partnerships with retail research sites, emphasizing collaboration, innovation, and shared accountability.

Advice for CROs and Sponsors Partnering With Retail Trial Sites

ACT: Walgreens has partnered with over two dozen life sciences companies. What advice would you offer clinical operations leaders on structuring productive, patient-centric collaborations with new types of trial partners like retail clinics or mobile units?

We are trying to build the right highway and bringing trials closer to where the patients are, recognizing that the barriers exist and making sure that we're building an ecosystem to remove those barriers and make it easier for participation, and then also leveraging insights, whether, again, it's qualitative insights, quantitative insights, because you understand who the patient population is, and that will start to allow us to better engage patients and drive smarter, in recruitment, and redefine that patient experience.

From our perspective, what we're seeing, and I think what we're seeing in the industry, a shift towards community-based clinical research, and I think that represents a significant paradigm change in the overall clinical research ecosystem. I think historically, many potential participants have been hindered by geographic or logistical challenges, limiting the applicability of trial results, so for us, it is really around building that model that brings trials within the communities.

I think just hosting trials in retail settings. Where Walgreens pharmacies are located, our goal is to make sure we're reducing those barriers. We're facilitating more of those collisions, more of those interactions with patients, getting patients comfortable. It's really around educating and making patients aware that clinical trials is a key part of one's care journey. Those conversations are not happening at all the provider settings. We're doing our part from a pharmacy perspective, and we're hoping those conversations are happening more consistently across all provider ecosystems, and that's really to ensure that the outcomes of these trials when they are finished, are applicable to a broader segment of the population, and then ultimately, when a drug does get approved, it improves the utility and the impact of medical research. For us, the integration of retail pharmacies into clinical research really affords a very unique opportunity to bridge the gap between research and then real-world data collection. For example, pharmacy-based clinical trials brings research opportunities directly into communities, expanding access to capturing real-world data, things that are happening in real time. As a result, pharmacy-based community trials, we have the ability to reach participants who may never have considered enrolling in traditional clinical trial settings, and just broadening that scope and inclusivity in clinical research.

In this video interview, Ramita Tandon, chief biopharma officer at Walgreens, shares how the company is driving more inclusive enrollment by engaging diverse communities, developing culturally competent materials, and meeting patients where they are.

Advancing Inclusive Recruitment in Trials

ACT: Walgreens’ patient population is 44% racially or ethnically diverse. What practical steps can clin ops teams at sponsors or CROs take to replicate that kind of inclusivity in recruitment?

This is such a critical part of, I think, ensuring that we can bring clinical trials into all communities, because I think historically and to some extent today, we've been reaching out to the same set of patient populations, which has led to the earlier statistic that I made, about less than 5% of patient populations participating in clinical research, and I think one of the key things is, is that we have to acknowledge that in order for us to engage in communities, it is has to be a bidirectional approach, which means we've got to spend the time to educate and empower patients to feel comfortable and understand, number one, what a clinical trial is, making sure they're being invited, and those conversations then become imperative in how they can start to make decisions and feel empowered to make that decision, to want to participate. That is not something that needs to be happening after the fact, but rather it needs to be in the DNA of how we conduct the future of clinical trials. Along those lines, it's about making sure that once we've done those education and empowering, when we engage the patients, it's making sure that we're creating culturally competent materials, materials that reflect who the communities are, materials that will actually invoke response and to be able to get patients to be able to say, “Yes, I trust what I'm seeing. I trust what I'm hearing. I feel comfortable to want to participate,” and this is why we're leveraging our Walgreens infrastructure, our assets, our trust, in a way to be able to get patients to engage and participate. Obviously, Walgreens has been in many of the communities we service, many of the underserved communities, so there's already a knowledge of how to be able to engage those communities, because they're coming in to pick up their prescriptions, they're talking to their pharmacists and the care teams that are at the at the stores and pharmacies. We're using a lot of that insights and knowledge to help us and make sure that that patients can be enrolling into clinical trials. I would say, in general, you've got to be intentional. You've got to be purposeful and create an ecosystem of community-based partnerships. So at Walgreens, when we host a number of events before clinical trials are launched, many of these events are taking place at our stores and pharmacies, but they're also in partnership with many of our local community partners that come along with us and start to create that surround sound and creating more of an ecosystem that allows patients to get comfortable. For us at Walgreens, we call it the Triple-E Framework. We engage, we empower, and we enable, and that allows us to drive action for bringing patients from all communities to participate.

In this video interview, Ramita Tandon, chief biopharma officer at Walgreens, discusses the operational investments required to activate pharmacies as clinical trial sites, including staff training, regulatory coordination, and patient-facing technology.

Building Clinical Trial Infrastructure Inside Pharmacies

ACT: Community-based access is at the core of Walgreens’ model. From an operational standpoint, what’s involved in setting up clinical trial infrastructure in a non-traditional site like a pharmacy?

 That's a great question. If we can step back here, obviously, Walgreens has been in the communities well over 120 years, so we are a pillar in the communities across the nation. We continue to provide our services, whether it's dispensing medications or healthcare services that are meant to help support looking to solve care gaps and removing barriers for patients to gain access to novel therapies, we're leveraging our assets in a way. Our trusted relationships that the pharmacists and the pharmacy care teams have with their patients, it allows us to leverage our assets in a way to create more of the model that I described earlier, so that we create pathways of bringing clinical research into the communities, but to make it more accessible and equitable and then ensuring that patients have a seamless experience for when they participate, because Andy, many of the patients that are joining our clinical trials, it's the first time for them, and oftentimes, there's been a lot of fear and just mistrust along the way, so there's a constant need to be able to educate and empower the patients to be able to make those decisions and feel comfortable to wanting to participate, so activating our full capabilities and assets within the pharmacy ecosystem has been very pivotal for us to be able to bring clinical research into the communities.

Now, certainly, there's a lot of investments in training our pharmacists who are supporting our clinical research. We have a dedicated clinical research team and trialists that are focused in executing these trials, but a big part of activating our Walgreens assets is our pharmacists. Our pharmacists are the ones that have the trusted relationships with the patient population and the communities. We're activating our frontline workers, and ultimately they're helping us to educate and drive awareness of why clinical research is absolutely critical for their own benefits, but also part of their care journey, because one of the things that are more important for us is to be changing that narrative that clinical trials is not nuanced as a laboratory exercise, but rather a care option, particularly when standard of care is not a viable option.

Our access to over 130 million patients and the daily interactions that we have—nearly I think 9 million patients that come into our stores and pharmacies every single day—puts us in a very unique position, because we have that direct access, we have that trust, so it allows us to leverage that patient population, to be able to engage and recruit them into our trials, and certainly the access to our data insights. We have a treasure trove of insights around our patients, whether they're coming into our store to purchase different products, or whether it's to pick up their prescriptions through our pharmacies, the amount of insights that we have, both quantitative and qualitative, allows us to really be more effective and efficient in how we identify those patient populations, match those patients to trials, but then also recruit them, because we know that simply just sending out messages for patients to want to enroll is not enough. That requires a lot of that community surround sound, but also understand who those patients are, how they want to engage. We have populations in our rural parts of America that prefer mailers. They actually prefer snail mail versus the electronic means of texting or emailing. We also engage our patients through phone calls, so those insights allow us to help us understand who the patient population is, engage them, so we can get those patients to respond, and then have the ability to participate in our trials.

Now, the patient referrals have been an integral part of our success over the last three years. Our Walgreens patient referrals are about 20% more likely to enroll in a study compared to other referrals, while increasing the participation of rates across more of a diverse patient population.

In this video interview, Heather Horville, solutions consultant at Greenphire, emphasizes the growing need for clinical operations to embed patient-centric services—from consent through final visit—to improve retention and overall trial success.

Designing Trials Around the Full Patient Journey

, Heather Horville, solutions consultant, Greenphire, discussed the challenges of retention and trial timelines due to increasing financial and logistical burdens on patients. Horville highlighted strategies to address these issues, such as early planning, patient advocacy, and site selection based on local needs. For complex trials, engagement through diary entries and stipends, and human interaction via concierge services will be critical. Future improvements will emphasize a comprehensive patient journey, incorporating services like travel prepayment to enhance trial success.

ACT: Looking ahead, how might clinical operations as a function evolve to better support the patient experience and, by extension, trial success?

I think that it's going to be more and more important to consider the entire patient journey from start to finish, really focusing on their experience and designing engagement throughout the life of the trial, from the initial consent and what that experience is, all the way through to the final visit and that final data collection. I think that's really going to be key. A lot of in line of what we've already been speaking about, but I think it's also important for the folks, the sponsors, really conducting these trials, to plan for these services to be in play, to engage patients, incorporating what used to be known as nice to have services like reimbursement, stipends, and travel, as really a way to ensure that we retain our patients throughout the trial. We know that we should be speaking to advocacy groups, reimbursing patients, and prepaying for travel. We know this, but all of these things cost money, and the data shows that they are more and more crucial in successive trials, so streamlining these services, ensuring that we're considering the site's experience, like we mentioned before, and planning to have these services involved can really help shape trial success in the future. I think it's just going to be more and more important to do so.

Removing Financial Barriers to Boost Trial Diversity

ACT: What roles do reimbursement, stipends, and other participant support measures play in improving trial diversity, and how should these be operationalized at the site level?

There's a lot less resources and communities of lower socioeconomic status, not just financially, but we think of, do they have family support nearby? Do they have caregivers able to help out? Do they have access to transportation? Sites must always be in the loop, and aware of what's going on with our patients. They're on the front lines. If we're going to employ a strategy, we need to make sure that it's streamlined. We need to make sure that it's easy for sites, and we want to provide patients an optimal experience, so having flexible options based on where the sites are around the world and what the patient prefers is really important, but we do really want to make sure that we are implementing that strategy to reimburse patients, to provide stipends, to prepay for travel, and really help ensure that they can enroll confidently and that they can be retained.

In this video interview, Heather Horville, solutions consultant at Greenphire, explains how upfront reimbursement, travel stipends, and flexible support services can empower more patients—especially those from underserved communities—to confidently enroll and stay in clinical trials.

In this video interview, Heather Horville, solutions consultant at Greenphire, discusses how clinical teams can boost participant retention in lengthy or complex trials through strategies like personalized engagement, stipends tied to ePRO diaries, and concierge services that offer one-to-one human connection.

Improving Retention in Long-Term Trials with Human-Centered Design

ACT: What are some best practices clinical operations professionals can adopt to improve participant retention across longer, complex trials?

Definitely, when we think of longer trials. First, in terms of length, there's a lot of time. We're hearing 10-15 year trials sometimes, so engagement for patients is going to be a really important factor to consider. How are we engaging with our patients? How are we motivating them to come back time and time again? We look at things like utilizing diary entries, ePRO, things to keep them engaged. At home, are we paying stipends when they complete their diaries each week to drive that retention, keeping them engaged? What we found to help with both longer and complex trials, both of those barriers, because they're different, is interaction with another human being and how important that is. We have something at Greenphire in terms of helping address that with our concierge services, that has a 95% retention rate, and that human interaction, that one to one relationship has been really, really impactful when we think of keeping them engaged. Really, that interaction with another human, that engagement and that motivation are going to be best practices there.

In this video interview, Heather Horville, solutions consultant at Greenphire, shares how patient advocacy, localized insights, and real-world logistics can help clinical operations teams design studies that are more accessible to rural and minority populations.

Designing Inclusive Trials: Removing Barriers for Underserved Patients

ACT: We know that rural and minority populations are disproportionately impacted by trial access barriers. How can clinical operations teams design protocols and site strategies to avoid unintentionally excluding these groups?

Now, when we think of study design, I really highly suggest that sponsors get more and more involved with patient advocacy groups, speaking to key opinion leaders, really finding out upfront what matters and how they can help, asking for feedback and what may prevent patients from enrolling in the first place, and then learning about the current climate for the different countries that they want to conduct research in, what's allowed, what's not, what is the preferred way to handle things. Once we find all this out, we can really use these learnings to design the study and inform site selection. One of the things that we may hear about in the feedback is, “How can we afford it?” Patients really ask that question. What if there are patients in this country, region, or town that don't have public transportation or ride share? I know, personally, I live in the country, I don't have public transportation within 40 minutes of a commute from my home. That's something that when you speak about rural populations, transportation is a huge barrier. In minority populations, we think of socioeconomic status in certain large cities and how that can be tied very largely to diverse groups. They have an impact when we have to think about, how are they going to take time off of work? How can they afford to do that? Who's going to watch their children? How are they going to pay for parking, meals, all of that? When we think of all those concerns, and we use that feedback, we can help design protocols and strategies, and we can help support our site to really help remove those barriers and make everyone's journey a lot easier.

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