Walgreens hosts LinkedIn Live discussion on the importance of diversity in clinical trials

Walgreens last week celebrated its one-year anniversary since the launch of Walgreens Clinical Trials offering, and also announced its latest collaboration with Freenome. In recognition of these achievements, on June 22, Walgreens brought together internal and industry leaders for a LinkedIn Live discussion on the importance of diversity in clinical trials and ongoing efforts to reduce barriers to participation, especially in underserved communities.

The LinkedIn event was led by Ramita Tandon, chief clinical trials officer at Walgreens and featured Vikas Arora, pharmacy manager at Walgreens, A. Toni Young, founder and executive director of the Community Education Group and Lindsay Moore-Fields, executive director, of the Center for Healthcare Innovation. 

Tandon opened the discussion by stating that clinical trials are the safest and the fastest way to find treatments that ultimately improve, extend and save lives. “We believe clinical trials is not just a research path, but a mechanism to get patients, especially from underserved communities into the overall healthcare ecosystem. We want people to have the opportunity and information to make the decision if they want to take advantage of an investigative therapy that might improve their outcomes, particularly if the standard of care they are on today is not working."

The panelists weighed in on the importance of diversity in clinical trials, touching upon the necessity for education and how pharmacies are leveraging their local presence to better educate and engage diverse communities which are very much impacted by certain disease areas.