Patient success takes a village, and Dr. Craig Cole of Karmanos Cancer Institute believes the village extends to the recruitment of Black patients for clinical trials. He shares that having team enthusiasm is one way to overcome barriers to studying Black patients.
Dr. Cole is the Director of Clinical Research in Hematology/Oncology and Multiple Myeloma at the Michigan State University/Karmanos Cancer Institute. He has led many clinical trials related to myeloma treatment. Black people account for 20 percent of multiple myeloma cases, though they are only represented in six percent of related trials.
In a recent interview on Patient Empowerment Network’s YouTube channel, Dr. Cole states that Black patients might be more comfortable with clinical trials if all treatment staff—not just doctors—express enthusiasm. He says that in a recent study, patients stated that their doctors didn’t want them on trials, but in reality, the doctors told them about trials, and the nursing staff was unfamiliar with them. The lack of a consensus from other staffers is off-putting for some people. Cole says they believe, “If [the nurse] doesn’t know about the clinical trial it, must not be good for me.”
The lack of enthusiasm caused many patients to withdraw from studies before they even finish reading the paperwork. “That excitement should be clinic-wide,” Cole states.
“It produces a culture of clinical trials that everybody wants to be part of,” Cole adds. “And the patients then can jump on that bus and feel comfortable.”
This could be especially off-putting, since patients are more likely to have racial concordance with a nurse or tech than a doctor. (There are 882,000 doctors in the US, and 5.1 percent are Black, compared to 6.3 percent of the 4.7 million RN’s who are Black.) Patients undergoing treatment may also spend more time with other team members than they do with the actual doctors creating their treatment plan.
Despite the rate of Black participation in clinical trials increasing over the years, the participation rate is still low. Black people make up 15 percent of studies, so every sign-up counts. While 67 percent of white Americans believe clinical trials are extremely important in the development of treatments, 59 percent of Black Americans feel the same.
The low number of individuals who sign up may further exacerbate health disparities for many conditions which may present differently in Black patients or have different causes than in white patients. Many may not realize that participation may be able to close the treatment gap and lead to better future outcomes for Black people.
