Dr. Carla Saenz, Regional Advisor for Bioethics at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), speaks with Willyanne DeCormier Plosky, MRCT Center Program Director, to unpack the clinical trial landscape in Latin America.
They discuss:
How demographics, healthcare infrastructure, and insurance models shape who can—and does—participate
Ethical and regulatory strategies to broaden inclusion
The influence of CIOMS and other international guidance on local trial ethics
Designing global studies that honor regional contexts without sacrificing scientific rigor
This episode highlights the critical need for equitable access and culturally responsive research in today’s global trial environment.
For more about the MRCT Center’s work on Global Representation in Clinical Trials, click here.
More about the Advancing Pediatric Platform Trials: Streamlining Development, Maximizing Impact conference:
The MRCT Center hosted a 2-day hybrid meeting in Washington DC in October 2024 to examine the potential benefits, challenges, and opportunities of platform trials for pediatric populations. In addition to consideration of overarching issues, three diseases – pediatric oncology, major depressive disorder (MDD), and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) – were chosen to represent different conditions, epidemiology, settings, therapeutic challenges, and patient populations, and to illuminate different potential approaches and solutions.
With ~80 pediatric and platform trial experts from Europe, the UK, Asia, Australia and the US in attendance, the discussants were successfully identified knowledge gaps and practical challenges that impact pediatric platform trial planning and execution. Each of the three subgroups recommended actionable approaches to address identified issues, and the respective groups continued to meet and take concrete steps, furthering the momentum created at the workshop, with the MRCT Center remaining actively involvedwith each disease-specific subgroup to facilitate the next steps.
Episode 2 of the Trials Beyond Borders podcast is now available on all streaming platforms. In this episode, Racquel Bruton, Associate Director and Clinical Trials Diversity Portfolio Lead at Biogen, and Willyanne DeCormier Plosky, Program Director at the MRCT Center, discuss how sponsor companies are enhancing representation in clinical trials, particularly outside the US. Racquel highlights Biogen’s longstanding commitment to reaching underrepresented populations and explores how the MRCT Center’s roadmap can help organizations develop effective diversity action plans. Tune in to learn practical insights on operationalizing diversity strategies.
The first podcast in our new series, “Trials Beyond Borders: Building Representative Clinical Trials Worldwide.” The podcast features a conversation with MRCT Center Program Director Willyanne DeCormier Plosky and Tinaya Gray, a consultant with ICON plc, focusing on communications between sponsors, CROs, and sites in planning for diversity action plans in the context of global trials.
MRCT Center Faculty Director Dr. Barbara E. Bierer had a thoughtful and informative discussion on Sree Sreenivasan‘s Daily, Global Show discussing COVID Clinical Trials and the need for diversity in clinical research.
Before any new drug comes to market, it goes through a time-consuming process. Researchers have to recruit human subjects for a clinical trial, collect all the data, and analyze the results. All of that can take years to complete, but the end result could be worth it: a drug that treats a rare disease or improves patients lives with fewer side effects.
