How Diversity in Clinical Trials Can Help You
Having more racial, ethnic and gender diversity in clinical trials can can impact generations of your family’s – and community’s – health.
Who’s Participating in Clinical Trials
You and your family’s health depends on knowing how a medical test or therapy affects them, based on their race, ethnicity, age and gender. But minorities and women are underrepresented in clinical trials – including trials studying some of the diseases that affect them most. Right now, clinical trials don’t enroll enough women and people of color.1 In fact, 83.3% of clinical trial participants are white.2
Why Is Diversity Important?
In order for results of clinical trials to apply to everyone, there must be more non-white and non-male volunteers
- There are differences in how diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, affect racial or ethnic groups and women
- Differences in how these groups respond to treatment might not become known until after a device or drug is approved and in widespread use
- If treatments are developed without showing how they affect everyone, minority and female patients may miss out on potentially lifesaving new screenings and treatments
Benefits for Your Family & Community
Women and minority clinical trial volunteers are needed in order to have diversity in clinical trials and create meaningful medical research. Having this research leads to products, drugs and procedures that are safe and effective for people with diverse backgrounds.
It also speeds up the approval of effective treatments for patients like you in the future.
1. Clinical trials follow very strict processes to study new medical screenings, diagnostic tests and therapies. |
Need a Doctor You Can Trust?
They’re out there, and we have a tool to help you find them.
Get Fully Informed
If you and your doctor decide that the benefits of a clinical trial outweigh the risks, you should learn all you can. Ask your doctor questions all about clinical trials.- ClinicalTrials.gov provides information about federally and private clinical research. It explains a trial’s purpose, who could participate, locations and contacts.
- National Institutes of Health offers educational resources and helpful overviews.
Get Funding to Increase Diversity
If you’re part of a nonprofit working to identify and recruit diverse clinical trial participants or to raise awareness about the importance of inclusion, we invite you to apply for a Boston Scientific grant.
Educate Your Community
Unfortunately, many underserved groups aren’t informed about their treatment options or the possibility for participating in clinical trials. Help spread the word in your community. Share what you’ve learned on this page and direct them to our health conditions resource page so they can make informed decisions about their care.