Underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority populations in cancer clinical trials persists partly because translation and interpretation services and resources are unavailable or inadequate in the United States, according to a Children's Oncology Group (COG) study led by Columbia University School of Nursing. The updated study was published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Cancer Spectrum on July 25, 2024, and will appear in the August 2024 journal issue. In 2019, 68 million people in the United States were reported to speak a language other than English at home.
In May 2023, the National Institutes of Health passed the Clinical Trial Diversity Act to enhance the inclusion of women, racially/ethnically diverse individuals, and people of all ages in NIH-funded research, building on 1994 legislation. Despite recent trends and policies, disparities remain. "Appropriate representation of minoritized and underrepresented populations in clinical research, including persons who do not speak English, is necessary to ensure equitable access to novel treatments and generalizable research findings," Columbia Nursing Assistant Professor Melissa Beauchemin, PhD, the study's lead author, and her colleagues state in their report.
To understand the extent of translation and interpretation challenges that organizations face, Beauchemin and her colleagues within the Language Equity Working Group of COG's Diversity and Health Disparities Committee surveyed 230 COG-af.