Find Black Trial Coordinators
If you’re enrolling mostly Black patients, getting Black coordinators is important so they feel like there’s a certain rapport, a certain understanding, or a certain connection between them. But making sure it’s not just getting somebody who’s the same race, but it’s making sure that those people understand the trial well. Can they answer questions in such a way that those people they’re enrolling feel comfortable? They should fully understand what the trial is about before they agree to enroll.
If possible, make sure that the individuals enrolling participants in the trial are from the same racial or ethnic group as those being enrolled.
Partnering with Black and Black-Adjacent Institutions
If you work with a predominantly white institution, it may be hard to not only engage but also enroll Black patients in a clinical trial. However, if you partner with institutions like the University of Illinois or Rush Hospital, with a larger population of Black patients, they can enroll in that trial. The beauty of partnering with such institutions is that the Black patients trust the physicians in those institutions because they’ve been going to them for some time, and maybe even their family members go to that institution, and so on. So partnering with institutions where some of our Black patients go to get care is also important.
Dr. Tochukwu Okwuosa is a Professor and Director of the Cardio-Oncology Program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL. She earned her medical degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her Internal Medicine and Cardiology training at the University of Chicago. Dr. Okwuosa’s primary research interests lie in the areas of Cardio-Oncology and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. She actively participates in multiple locoregional and national Cardiology/Cardio-Oncology committees and boards, serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Heart Association, and is the Immediate Past Chair of the American Heart Association’s Cardio-Oncology sub-Committee.