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The Lustgarten Foundation has awared its inaugural Lustgarten Equity, Accessibility, and Diversity (LEAD) Project grant to Jen Jen Yeh, MD, in support of her PROmoting CLinicAl TrIal EngageMent for Pancreatic Cancer App Study (PROCLAIM Study).

Jen Jen Yeh, MD
Dr. Jen Jen Yeh, MD

The PROCLAIM Study, to be conducted in partnership with Ugwuji Maduekwe, MD, MMSc, MPH, Associate Professor at Medical College of Wisconsin, will focus on breaking down the barriers to diverse clinical trial population recruitment, which commonly include racial bias, distrust, poor communication, and culturally discordant clinical trial materials.

Yeh and Maduekwe, based on work by Marjory Charlot, MD, MPH, MSc, will employ a mobile health technology initiative as an educational and communication tool to foster open discussion between Black patients with pancreatic cancer and their care teams with the aim of increasing clinical trial participation and improving outcomes of an historically underserved patient population. Charlot’s recent ACCURE trial and subsequent research into the disparities in treatment between white and Black patients with cancer shed light on the barriers to timely treatment faced by historically marginalized patients and identified crucial interventions to eliminate such inequities.

Ugwuji Maduekwe MD, MMSc, MPH
Ugwuji Maduekwe MD, MMSc, MPH

“We will be collaborating with key Black community stakeholders to view community- and culturally-specific barriers through their lenses and learn how to address these barriers with effective interventions. Dr. Charlot’s studies and their significant findings inspired our project. Thanks to Lustgarten’s generous support, we hope to contribute to Dr. Charlot’s progress and help ensure that historically marginalized groups are fairly represented in pancreatic cancer clinical trials, better informed about care options, and more effectively served by their providers,” said Yeh, professor of surgery and pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine and director of the UNC Lineberger Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence.

~The above is excerpted from the original article with the same title, published in UNC Lineberger News September 20, 2022. You can read the full article here.