First Town Hall Meeting on Inequities in Clinical Trials to Take Place at the Harlem Hospital Center on ...( Community Leaders/Patients Encour...),Health

Community Leaders/Patients Encouraged to Discuss Challenges; Offer Solutions

NEW YORK, Oct. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the heels of a major report revealing that the vast majority of Americans -- and especially women, older people and racial and ethnic minorities -- are either under-represented or completely excluded from the medical studies for diseases from asthma to cancer, Harlem Hospital Center will host a town hall on Monday, October 20 so local leaders, patients, family members and health professionals from the five boroughs can offer their ideas on how to reduce disparities in clinical trials at the community level. The forum will be held in the Herbert G. Cave Auditorium at the Harlem Hospital Center (second floor) from 5 pm to 8 pm.

The first of eight Regional Dialogues to be held in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, the Harlem town hall is part of the EDICT (Eliminating Disparities in Clinical Trials) Initiative, which for the last three years has been advancing solutions so more qualified Americans can take part in important medical studies. EDICT is spearheaded by the Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Research Center (CDPCRC) at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the Intercultural Cancer Council (ICC), working to eliminate the unequal burden of cancer among racial and ethnic minorities and medically underserved populations.

Coming at a time when less than one percent of the entire U.S. population -- or an estimated 2.3 million Americans -- takes part in the 80,000 medical research studies conducted every year in the U.S., the Harlem town hall will confront one of the major barriers impeding clinical research: communities are usually left out of the clinical trials process. According to the report issued by EDICT in April 2008, lack of community participation in the clinical trials process is a major reason that the makeup of research studies does not mirror those in the population with the highest rates of disease.
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