Rural populations underrepresented in clinical trials - Entrepreneur Generations

Clinical trials can help patients who haven't been cured by traditional means, but according to new research, people in underserved areas such as rural America appear to not know how to find out more about them, and community physicians reported not having appropriate information to give them, Kristie Kahl reports for Cure, a publication about cancer updates, research and education.

According to the data, which will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in April, rural patients are often underrepresented in clinical trials and biobanking, in which samples of bodily fluids or tissue are collected for medical research. That means that researchers don't understand as much as they could about rural populations.

Terry Davis, professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at Louisiana State University and co-author of the study, said it's a communication problem: "Researchers often assume that patients and community providers know more than they do about clinical trials and understand all of our jargon."

One recurring problem was differences in terminology. Researchers might say "clinical trials" whereas patients might call them "studies". And while researchers say "biobanking", the patients Davis and her colleagues surveyed better understood them saying "your blood or tissue will be stored in a bank."



from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2I96uav Rural populations underrepresented in clinical trials - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet