Work

Promoting equitable patient representation in therapeutic clinical trials by accounting for population disease burden

Year: 2025

Type: letter

Abstract: Buffenstein et al. reported an impressively comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of nearly 3000 randomized clinical trials of various diseases with over 600,000 participants between 2008 and 2019 1 . Using this data, clinical trial representation by gender, ethnicity, and race proportions were evaluated compared to the 2010 United States (US) Census 1 . We applaud the authors for including all five federally defined racial categories per the 1997 US Office of Management and Budget, including both the American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) and the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) populations, who are often excluded or inappropriately aggregated in medical research 2 , 3 . The authors reported that NHPI and Black participants were overrepresented, while female, AI/AN, Asian, White, and multi-racial participants were underrepresented, with only female and Hispanic participant representation improving over time 1 .

Source: Scientific Reports

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-91174-x

Authors: Megan Y. Gimmen, Kekoa Taparra, Curtiland Deville, Scarlett Lin Gomez

Institutions: Harvard University, Stanford Health Care, Stanford Medicine, Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Language: English

Topic: Ethics in Clinical Research

Subfield: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,690

OpenAlex ID: W4408892782

Cites: 12

Cited by: 1

Related to: 10