IPG Health debuts new clinical trial diversity approach prompted by pharma company requests

IPG Health is aiming to boost the call for more diversity in clinical trials with a new multi-disciplinary approach for pharma clients.

Based on its years of health equity experience — including its ongoing “Trial for #ClinicalEquality” campaign — the pharma and healthcare agency’s latest offering aims to address the gap between the desire for diversity in clinical trials and the real-world lack of it. Pharma clients have approached the agency, noting its pro bono work and accumulated expertise, to ask for help with their own efforts.

Sommer Bazuro

“It’s both a moral and a scientific issue. Morally, we cannot keep disenfranchised people from innovation in clinical trials,” said Sommer Bazuro, chief medical officer of IPG Health. “From a scientific perspective, we cannot test hypotheses correctly when we have [trial] populations that do not align with disease demographics.”

IPG Health is using a multi-disciplinary approach to “come at it from a lot of different angles,” she said. That includes creative recruiting communications and campaigns, but also medical engagement strategy, software intelligence, data analytics and patient experience expertise. The offering has already been piloted with some of its pharma clients, and is rolling out as a customizable diversity solutions for different studies.

“The diversity will depend. Some clients might be looking for older populations, or for younger populations, or people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds. Or maybe they might be looking for more women or more men,” Bazuro said. “It will be very clinical trial specific.”

The targeted option is rolling out even as the agency continues to advocate for clinical trial diversity awareness through advertising and communications.

IPG Health’s award-winning clinical equality awareness ad campaign, “Trial for #ClinicalEquality,” now 2 years old, pointedly and poignantly reminds people of the real lack of diversity in studies. A video lays out facts such as African Americans make up 13% of the population in the US, but only 3% of oncology trials, and Hispanics account for 19% of the population, but only 6% of the participants in oncology clinical trials.

“Our clients very much want to have diverse clinical trials. They do not want this inequity,” Bazuro said. “But they have logistical barriers they face, and we felt that we have to help them close the gap.”

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