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#ClinicalTrialsSoWhite: How Drug Makers Are Using COVID-19 To Improve Trial Diversity

Pandemic Highlights Trials’ Minority Underrepresentation

 
• By Alaric DeArment

Efforts to improve trial diversity predate COVID-19, but the pandemic’s disproportionate effects on minority communities have brought the issue to the forefront.

Closed up finger on keyboard with word CLINICAL TRIALS
Clinical trial diversity is a longtime topic of discussion, but COVID-19 has highlighted its importance • Source: Shutterstock

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a number of deficiencies within the US health care system, chief among them the vast gulf of inequality between different ethnic groups and geographic areas, a gulf that has resulted in the virus causing significant disease and death among Black, Latino and Native American communities. A consequence of that inequality is that the populations enrolled into clinical trials have historically often not properly reflected the ethnic makeup of the country.

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