Clinical Trial Diversity Can Happen Through Impactful Website Design

The more diverse a clinical trial, the more it reveals data that could be critical to understanding outcomes. Many life science firms may be overlooking an essential tactic for appealing to a more diverse audience.

Recruitment of enough subjects to participate in clinical trials is a massive problem for biotech companies. Studies show that 80% of trials are closed or delayed due to enrollment issues, and fewer than ten percent of Americans enroll in clinical trials. The challenge is even more acute for rare disease research, which must recruit from small subject pools.

Diversification in clinical trials matters because different groups can respond to medical therapies differently. Studies have found that women are more likely than men to experience adverse drug reactions because female bodies can take longer to eliminate drugs than male bodies. Black/ African Americans with hypertension may respond differently to blood pressure-lowering medications than members of other racial groups.

Participation in clinical trials is low for all demographic groups, but it's especially low among people in certain groups. According to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, of the 32,000 patients in the U.S. who participated in novel drug trials in 2020, only 8% were Black/African American, and 11% were Hispanic.

A Historic Lack of Diversity

Unfortunately, diversity has been a low priority in clinical trials for decades. Much of the research that informs medical decision-making today was done primarily on white men, with the assumption that findings would also apply to women and non-white people.

Even today, as an understanding of the importance of diversity in clinical trials grows, huge gaps remain. A recent analysis showed that although men and women have an equal risk of stroke, only 37% of participants in clinical trials of stroke treatments are female. Another study found that although Black adults are two times more likely to develop hypertension by middle age than white adults, only about 5 percent of hypertension clinical trials in recent years have explicitly focused on black participants.

So Why is This the Case?
 
Researchers often struggle to increase diversity in clinical trials. Various barriers—include lack of information and awareness, time and financial constraints, and distrust of the medical system. These are the biggest challenges.

"There's no simple resolution to this problem, but there is one relatively straightforward way for life science and biotech clinical trial websites to appeal to a more diverse audience for study recruitment: Engage with a proven patient recruitment marketing agency that knows how to implement intelligent website design."

While other biotech-centric web design agencies may be “aware” of the critical lack of diversity in clinical trials, Trial AMPlify is successfully doing something about it. We understand how to use web design, messaging, imagery, and strategies to create and promote clinical trial websites that appeal to the diverse audience with whom biotech firms want to engage.

Take a look at some of the ways Trial AMPlify can help you connect with a more diverse group of clinical trial subjects:

·     Preparation: Before designing anything, we meet with clients, interview stakeholders, doctors, and prospective subjects to discuss strategic goals. During these discussions, we identify and understand the demographic and diversity objectives. 

·     Impactful, Empathetic Design: Once we start creating the website design, we keep the diversity goals front of mind. We use imagery, videos, patient stories, language, icons, infographics, and design elements that reflect target demographic groups' identities and comfort levels. Usability best practices for targeting demographic groups also ensure your science is quickly understood. Trial AMPlify goes beyond making sure your site is inclusive and welcoming; we make it remarkable. Our award-winning creative has designed some of the most successful biotech and pharma websites globally, including a handful of the most prestigious medical schools in the US.

·     Building Trust: You may want to include a direct appeal to target groups, with an explanation of why their participation matters to themselves and their demographic. Openness can help build trust, which is crucial because mistrust has been identified as a significant barrier to clinical trial participation in some demographic groups.

·     Accessibility: Diversity-conscious web design prioritizes accessibility. We sometimes forget that not everyone has a laptop. Most people in the world only have a mobile device. An accessible site is more easily navigated by people with disabilities or low technology literacy. Trial AMPlify optimizes accessibility with our choices of color, contrast between text and background, navigation strategies, and content flow across ALL devices. We make sure calls to action such as site locations, eligibility, and enrollment are straightforward and easy to understand.

To sum up, design isn't just about making a clinical trial website look good. It can also help you achieve your diversity objectives, resulting in higher enrollment rates for clinical trials, more robust results, and better health outcomes for patients.

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