Overcoming Barriers to Clinical Trial Enrollment, with Ryan D. Nipp, MD, MPH and Electra D. Paske… [Video]

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In today’s podcast, Dr. Ryan Nipp and Dr. Electra Paskett will discuss their article “Overcoming Barriers to Clinical Trial Enrollment,” from the 2019 ASCO Educational Book. They discuss why it is important for people with cancer to participate in clinical trials and some of the reasons people may not be able to participate in clinical trials. They also discuss finding financial resources, the informed consent process, and the role of patient navigators.

Dr. Nipp is a gastrointestinal oncologist and health services researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Dr. Paskett is the Marion N. Rowley Professor of Cancer Research at The Ohio State University. She is the Director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control in the College of Medicine, a professor in the Division of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health, and the associate director for Population Sciences and Program Leader of the Cancer Control Program in the Comprehensive Cancer Center of OSU. She is also the director of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at the James Cancer Hospital.

Published annually, the Educational Book is a collection of articles written by ASCO Annual Meeting speakers and oncology experts. Each volume highlights the most compelling research and developments across the multidisciplinary fields of oncology.

ASCO would like to thank Dr. Nipp and Dr. Paskett for discussing this topic.

Dr. Ryan Nipp: My name is Ryan Nipp. I work at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I am a gastrointestinal oncologist. And I do research focused on palliative care, geriatrics, health services research. And I’m a part of the Cancer Outcomes Research team at Mass General.

Dr. Electra Paskett: I’m Electra Paskett. I’m at the Ohio State University. I am a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, College of Medicine. And I’m also the associate director for population sciences and a community engagement. And my research focuses on prevention, early detection, and working with survivors, mainly in terms of developing interventions to get people to do things to prevent cancer, detect it earlier, or live longer. And I have a specific focus in underserved and minority populations focusing on disparities.

Dr. Ryan Nipp: And we are talking about a podcast where we had done some discussion at this year’s ASCO meeting about overcoming barriers to clinical trial enrollment. And we were just going to go through a few questions together and kind of give our thoughts on each of these. And the first question I wanted to ask you, Dr. Paskett, is why do you think it’s important for patients to be involved in cancer clinical trials?

Dr. Electra Paskett: I would say for 2 reasons. First of all, we know that patients on clinical trials actually get very close monitoring, and so they would get the best of standard of care at their institutions. And secondly, the way that we progress in terms of knowing how to treat cancer, how to detect cancer early, and how to prevent cancer is through what we learn in clinical trials. Therefore, it’s really important for all of us to participate in clinical trials so we can move the innovations and the new treatments and prevention strategies forward. And the only way to do that is through evidence from clinical trials.

Dr. Ryan Nipp: Absolutely. I agree. Just coming at this from a clinical standpoint as a gastrointestinal oncologist, we talk about this a lot in day-to-day practice where we have the standard of care option and then we have a clinical trial option. And as you brought out, that’s exactly right. At the very least, everyone should be getting the absolute best standard of care and clinical trial. From our standpoint, the way we usually discuss it is it’s what we’re trying to do is advance knowledge, and this is, hopefully, going to benefit the patient currently, and then also, develop new knowledge for future patients. And ultimately, this is to advance the field forward. And that’s one of the things I think is so exciting about oncology. The next question we were going to talk about was what are some of the barriers that might prevent a patient from participating in a clinical trial?

Dr. Electra Paske…