Recruitment

As the FDA's single-trial standard raises the cost of recruitment failure and diversity expectations intensify, sponsors are under pressure to move beyond study-by-study outreach toward programmatic, relationship-based approaches that treat patient engagement as a long-term strategic capability rather than a per-study operational task.

Eligibility criteria alone rarely predict enrollment, which depends more on trust, hope, and fear, requiring relationship-based community engagement paired with behavioral readiness assessments rather than transactional outreach.

From rising costs and regulatory uncertainty to persistent vaccine hesitancy, sponsors face mounting pressure to standardize operations, build community trust, and develop the behavioral capabilities needed to run vaccine trials effectively in a rapidly shifting environment.

From planning one Phase III trial at a time to digital standardization on repeat.

In this Q&A, Del Smith, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Acclinate, discusses how structural and relational barriers continue to limit participation from underrepresented communities in clinical trials—and what it takes to build the kind of trust that translates into lasting research impact.

Despite political headwinds, life sciences leaders are holding their ground on DEI, but translating organizational commitment into representative enrollment requires structural changes to protocol design, site selection, and community engagement that most of the industry has yet to fully make.

In this Q&A, Adrelia Allen, executive director of clinical trial patient diversity at Merck, discusses how the company is embedding diversity into clinical trial execution—from protocol design and site selection to long-term community engagement that extends well beyond individual trial timelines.

Pediatric trial participation shapes children's and caregivers' long-term psychological outcomes, yet protocol design often overlooks experience as a variable affecting recruitment, retention, and data integrity—a gap increasingly recognized by regulators and quality standards

In this video interview, Del Smith, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Acclinate, explains how deep community relationships generate insights that improve protocol design, endpoint selection, and site placement, while building an on-ramp that compounds in value across future studies.

Behavioral science reveals how recruitment failures, site disengagement, and underrepresentation in clinical trials are rooted in early design decisions, and what sponsors can do to address them before they become costly problems.

Real-world data is increasingly used to optimize trial design, reduce recruitment burden, and support regulatory decisions, but adoption remains uneven due to challenges around data quality, integration, and internal alignment across functional areas.

In this video interview, Del Smith, PhD, CEO and co-founder of Acclinate, examines the structural and relational barriers that keep underrepresented communities out of clinical trials and explains how authentic, sustained community engagement differs from traditional recruitment outreach.

In part 1 of this three-part series, behavioral science reveals how slow patient recruitment and enrollment challenges often stem from design and startup decisions made long before recruitment begins, but can be identified and resolved early when they still matter.

Analysis from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development suggests that transparency in clinical evidence, community engagement, and more representative clinical trials are key factors associated with faster vaccine adoption and improved public trust.

Older adults generate disproportionately high engagement in digital trial recruitment, suggesting they represent an overlooked opportunity when recruitment systems are designed around their actual behavior rather than outdated assumptions about digital capability.

In this first part of a 2-part perspective, clinical trial recruitment failures are reframed as design outcomes, making the case for embedding enrollment feasibility into protocol governance from the start.

Miriam Dervan, founder & CEO of mdgroup, discusses how patient-centered strategies rooted in empathy and advocacy engagement can strengthen recruitment, retention, and overall trial execution.

Miriam Dervan, founder & CEO of mdgroup, explains how treating patient experience as a strategic investment—rather than a secondary consideration—changes how sponsors, sites, and operational teams design and deliver clinical trials.

Explore how large-scale, de-identified real-world datasets enable more representative trial design, improve site selection, and support patient identification beyond the limits of traditional clinical study populations.

Explore early data from the ACTS program that reveal the volume and types of patient-reported barriers to cancer care and clinical trial participation, highlighting the critical role of support services in sustaining enrollment.

Learn why combining AI-enabled trial matching with transportation, lodging, and financial assistance is essential to turning trial eligibility into actual participation—and why matching alone is not enough.

Examine how the American Cancer Society’s national ACTS expansion is designed to simplify trial discovery, reduce logistical barriers, and help patients, caregivers, and providers navigate cancer clinical trials through a centralized support model.

Persistent recruitment delays, high dropout rates, and missed timelines continue to slow global clinical trials, while data show that sub-Saharan Africa offers a largely untapped opportunity with established research capacity, large patient pools, and strong enrollment and retention performance.