Identifying and Addressing the Barriers to Clinical Trial Access

For immunocompromised patients with cancer in search of a clinical trial, the COVID-19 pandemic stands as a significant barrier to enrollment, given the worry that comes with visiting a cancer clinic and potentially exposing themselves to the virus. But as Martha Raymond and her colleagues discovered, there are a number of other barriers to clinical trial enrollment that need to be addressed, particularly in ethnically diverse communities.

In this week’s episode of the CURE Talks Cancer podcast, we spoke with Raymond, who is the founder of The Raymond Foundation, about how providers can ensure patient safety to increase trial enrollment, and what she and her colleagues are doing to provide better trial access to all patients with cancer.

“I just hope that individuals know that we are working as hard as we can to help meet those unmet needs and bridge the gaps and working for inclusion for all of our all of our cancer patients,” said Raymond.