Provide Education

Opportunity

Information about clinical trials has become increasingly complex, technical, and more difficult for potential participants to understand and locate. Providing clear and easy to understand general information about clinical trials and providing solutions to facilitate participation allows patients to more easily find clinical trials and be better informed when making the decision to participate.

Considerations to Help Action the Opportunity

• Identify a communication strategy / plan (e.g., what information should be shared, how, when, to whom) 
• Provide “health literacy” expertise to clinical trial information 
• Try to align the timing of distribution of materials to participant preference
• Better accommodate participant preferences by making materials available in various formats (e.g., paper, online)
  • Identify types of content and format (e.g., videos, graphics, illustrations, etc.) to make clinical trial related information more accessible, particularly to those who are non-native English speakers or those who may have learning disabilities
  • Offer detailed, patient-friendly information to better allow patients to review in their own time
  • Identify what materials may be needed in local language and timing of ethics committee reviews
• Consider developing a sponsor website (global trial database) that allows clinical trial participants to search for all available clinical trials available to them (e.g., search by indication, etc.)
  • Promote your global website is implemented (e.g., “get the word out” via Google Ad paid search, or through patient advocacy groups and community leader websites)
  • Provide links to other sponsor trials in the same indication so the patient’s search journey continues
• Partner with patients to build tools and resources tailored to the indication (i.e., study-specific websites), which may include study information, and is linked to a global clinical trial database (i.e., sponsor-specific or clinicaltrials.gov) for consistency
  • Partner with patient organizations, community leaders and social media, if possible, to extend the reach of the study-specific website

Value and Potential Benefits

• Empowers patients with information to help make informed decisions about clinical trial participation
• Increases transparency and access to clinical trial information for participants to better support informed decision making
• Improves patient experience, as they can choose the learning style that suits them to assist in understanding of trial information and their rights / options when participating in a clinical trial
• Improves recruitment and retention as well-informed patients tend to create more reliable trial participants
• Increases awareness with targeted information (i.e., provide in-language information)