What are the socioeconomic disparities in the access to pediatric clinical trials?

During the 65th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, the ALL Hub spoke with Lena Winestone, University of California, San Francisco, US. We asked, What are the socioeconomic disparities in the access to pediatric clinical trials?

Winestone highlights the limited data surrounding the socioeconomic status of families of pediatric patients, resulting in the use of proxy measures, such as insurance status, race/ethnicity, and area-based measures such as neighborhood environment. There are also challenges in understanding the association between socioeconomic factors and clinical trial enrollment.

For the remainder of the discussion, Winestone reviews the existing data on race/ethnicity and socioeconomic disparities in access to clinical trials, including historical area-based data, patient-to-patient level data, and county-level data. She concludes by highlighting a report from the COG trials, which found no association between area-based socioeconomic measures and participation in clinical trials; interestingly, an association was observed with distance to care.