ASH 2024 | Evaluating barriers to clinical trial enrollment in myeloma: results from HCPs & a patient survey

So the UK Myeloma Research Alliance is the national group responsible for myeloma research in the UK and we have a specific focus within that group, looking at equity and diversity. To try and understand how we can address barriers towards clinical research, we performed a national survey for healthcare providers to understand what challenges they had in enrolling different patient groups into clinical trials. What we found was that healthcare providers were more likely to say that resource restrictions were the major barrier. So specifically what we’re identifying is that patients from minorities, whether they’d be racial minorities or lower socioeconomic class, sometimes need a bit more time in clinic to spend with their doctors or nurses to explain what the novel therapies are and what the impact of the novel therapies have on their lifestyle. And healthcare providers were struggling to do that, predominantly because of busy clinics and lack of staffing. We also found challenges in terms of trying to find interpreters, particularly face-to-face interpreters, to help with minority patients who may not have English as their first language. We then looked at a patient population, and we did that at my organization, and asked them what their barriers were. In general, they were very receptive to taking part in clinical trials, but they also stated that travel was a major problem in terms of access to clinical trials and being able to afford coming to hospital and having the time away from both work and their other responsibilities that they may have. So I think we need to think about this when looking into talking to patients about novel therapies because it’s very important that patients from all different walks of life are able to access novel therapies and clinical trials.

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