Over 100 individuals from healthcare institutions, community organizations, and a local high school joined members and staff of Case CCC for the 8th Cancer Disparities Symposium on March 6-7 to learn about and discuss the successes and future directions of clinical trials across the consortium.
The symposium covered topics such as comprehensive approaches to clinical trial accruals, closing the gap in clinical trials for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, and molecular determinants of disparities in triple-negative breast cancer.
Vanessa Sheppard, PhD, Founding Dean of the School of Public Health at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Senior Advisor to the Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, gave the keynote speech titled Can Clinical Trials be Tools for Health, Healing and Hope. She shared lessons from community outreach and engagement, discussed obstacles to achieving representation in clinical trials from all groups, and strategies to improve full participation. Sheppard ended her presentation by stating, "Research progress brings hope, and how we conduct trials can reduce disparities or exacerbate them." She encouraged attendees to think about how to be the answer to the problem rather than contribute to it, concluding, "We need to answer these world problems because we have come too far to go back.”
Attendees read Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society by Arline Geronimus, PhD, for the common reading discussion. Geronimus coined the term "weathering" to describe the effects of systemic oppression on the body. Symposium attendees discussed the importance of being mindful of this phenomenon when engaging with patients and working with groups in the community and brainstormed how organizations and systems can address weathering.
Community voices were included in this year’s symposium through a panel of cancer survivors who shared their experiences with clinical trials. Two panelists discussed how important timing is when being asked to participate in a clinical trial and the relationship with the person introducing the clinical trial. For panelists who initially declined to participate in clinical trials, they noted that going forward they would sign up for a trial because they recognize the importance of having representation in research from individuals who identify as Black or African American.
The final session of the symposium was a round table discussion about the future of clinical trials across the Case CCC consortium with Gary Schwartz, MD, Case CCC Director, Ted Teknos, MD, President of University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and Case CCC's Deputy Director, and Wen Wee Ma, MBBS, Director of Novel Cancer Therapeutics at Cleveland Clinic.
Highlights from the conversation include the importance of representation in clinical trial research, how to increase access to clinical trials across the consortium, acknowledging the growth in collaboration across the consortium, the breadth of the types of clinical trials that are both open and meaningful for all communities, and the possibility of conducting trials closer to catchment area communities so people can participate more easily.