Written by:
Ashley Moultrie, Associate Director of Clinical Trial Diversity, Syneos Health
Every year, National Minority Health Month gives us an important opportunity to pause and reflect. It gives us the space to recognize the health disparities that continue to shape healthcare experiences and outcomes for far too many. It also acknowledges the individuals and communities often pushed to the margins of care and opportunity, while reaffirming the responsibility we share in shifting that reality. A shift that requires both recognition and action.
Recognition matters, but it cannot be where our work ends. For those of us committed to inclusion and representation in clinical research, recognition has been key to creating visibility. It has opened space for important conversations, difficult truths, and the necessary groundwork for strategic action. It reminds us that health inequities aren’t abstract theories. They are urgent and pervasive challenges that carry deep consequences for individuals and communities.
Representation Will Move Trials Forward
As clinical research professionals, National Minority Health Month should also be a call to action. If we are committed to improving health equity, we must be equally committed to strengthening the scientific evidence that informs care and treatment and drives innovation. To do that effectively, we must continue to move beyond awareness with more measurable, sustainable person and community-informed action.
As an industry, we’ve repeatedly demonstrated that inclusion and representation in clinical research is a necessity. That’s no longer the question. The question now is what meaningful actions will drive our commitments and goals forward in impactful lasting ways. It’s often said that what gets measured gets done, and as an industry, that’s where this work began. Our intentions drove us to conversations about our desired outcomes, and measurable goals were our initial steps forward. Many of our goals related to representation, access and patient engagement have helped guide decision-making and lay the groundwork for establishing initial accountability structures. Now we need to move beyond the “what” of our goals to the “how” of sustainable progress. This means being more intentional about who helps shape clinical research, where clinical research takes place and who is supported to lead it moving forward.
That work begins with community-informed and community-led engagement. If we want clinical research to better reflect and serve all populations, then the communities we serve cannot be treated as passive recipients of research opportunities. We have to recognize, and honor, that communities bring expertise of their own, especially when it comes to barriers to participation, concerns about research processes and the realities of individual and collective lived experiences. Those we serve should be engaged as partners whose insights help shape study design, participant experience, the practical considerations of relevance and access, and what success looks like.
Meaningful engagement cannot be reactive. It must begin early and remain consistent. Effective engagement not only builds community capacity, but it also provides real influence and shared decision-making, without tokenism or undue burden.
When we build clinical research alongside patients and communities, rather than keeping them “top of mind,” trials are more likely to be inclusive, accessible and representative of the populations they are intended to serve.
Accessibility requires us to think differently about where research happens. If clinical trials continue to only be concentrated within the same systems and geographies, we cannot be surprised when we have persistent access gaps. Broadening representation requires broadening the research footprint itself. Not a shift away from our typical research environments but expanding beyond them. That means investing in sites and care centers closer to where people live and are already receiving care, including community-based and emerging clinical research sites and care centers.
Community-based and emerging clinical research sites are critical to our industry’s expansion. These sites and care centers can help close long-standing gaps in clinical trial awareness, access, and experiences. By embedding clinical research within trusted community-health and emerging care environments, we improve accessibility and redefine the patient experience in clinical development. Long-term success, however, also depends on providing infrastructure, partnership, and operational support needed to thrive.
Guiding the Next Generation
Meaningful and sustainable action toward greater health equity must also include intentional investment in the next generation of clinical trial investigators. A more inclusive and representative clinical research ecosystem doesn’t only depend on those who join as trial participants, but also on who is prepared, supported and entrusted to lead them. Creating stronger and clearer pathways for the next generation of investigators is critical, particularly for those from, connected to, and/or committed to serving historically underserved communities, as well as those who’ll serve in not-as-common research settings and infrastructure. Mentorship, operational support, and real opportunities to lead trials are all part of building a future in which clinical research leadership is broader, stronger, more inclusive, and better equipped to meet the needs of all populations.
Together, these key priorities can help move our industry beyond the metrics alone, and toward more sustainable implementation and impact.
National Minority Health Month was created out of necessity to shine a light on the disparities that live(d) within the healthcare ecosystem. Whether you sit at the intersection of health equity and access, health equity and outcomes, or on one of the many roads in between, this month offers an opportunity to reflect on where our work began, give recognition to the work we’ve done, and more importantly, recommit and reenergize for the continued work ahead.
Health equity work is complex, and there is no single solution that will address disparities on its own. But, community-informed & community-led engagement, stronger investment in community-based and emerging site infrastructure and intentional development of the next generation of clinical trial investigators can help our industry be better stewards of our “intersection” of health equity and clinical development.