How Did We Increase Accrual into Pediatric Cancer Studies by 48%?

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Many decry the fact that only 3 to 5 percent of adults with cancer in the U.S. join clinical trials, but a deeper challenge emerges when you put faces to these numbers. Close to 90 percent of those who do enroll in trials are white, and only 5.6 percent are Latino.

Read here about what the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is doing to increase the enrollment of minority and underserved patients in clinical trials.

Also read more about the effort by Redes En Acción, the Latino cancer research network led by the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, the team behind SaludToday, to use patient navigation to boost pediatric cancer clinical trial recruitment in South Texas.

Redes, working closely to outreach to and educate the Latino community and assisted by a trained, bilingual patient navigator, Cynthia Wittenburg, increased by 48 percent the number of Latino children accrued to pediatric hematology/oncology clinical trials in a South Texas county with high rates of childhood leukemia.

“This was a most impressive result,” said Redes En Acción Director Dr. Amelie Ramirez, “and speaks to the importance of community involvement combined with the promise of navigation to help increase enrollment among some of our most vulnerable populations.”