June 13, 2022.
National Center for Health Research’s Comments on Diversity Plans to Improve Enrollment of Participants From Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Populations in Clinical Trials [FDA-2021-D-0789]
We are writing to express our views on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) draft guidance to provide recommendations to sponsors developing medical products on the approach for developing a plan to enroll representative numbers of participants from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations.
The National Center for Health Research (NCHR) is a nonprofit think tank that conducts, analyzes, and scrutinizes research on a range of health issues, with particular focus on which prevention strategies and treatments are most effective for which patients and consumers. We do not accept funding from companies that make products that are the subject of our work, so we have no conflicts of interest.
We strongly support the proposed recommendations which provide specific, actionable guidance for sponsors to develop a meaningful Race and Ethnicity Diversity Plan. In particular, we appreciate the proposed recommendation for sponsors to clearly define and justify enrollment goals for underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations. Most important, representation in a trial must be adequate to conduct appropriate subgroup analyses on efficacy and safety. For example, if a minority group is 20% of the patient population but there are only 100 patients in the entire study, 20 patients would be 20% but would not be sufficient to determine safety or efficacy for that group.
It is thus encouraging that the draft proposal recommends that sponsors provide any available evidence describing disparities in health outcomes related to the drug or therapy, but acknowledges that the lack of this evidence should not be grounds to ignore the importance of diversity. For too long, many clinically meaningful disparities in the efficacy of drugs or therapies in minority populations have been hidden by a lack of data. Thus, it is crucial to ensure that sponsors describe existing research on similarities and differences in how the disease or condition under study is experienced by racial and ethnic minorities, and identify potential gaps in existing data.
The goal is for the inclusion of these recommendations to improve the accountability of sponsors to make real and sustainable improvements in the representation of minorities in trials. However, to truly hold sponsors accountable, this draft proposal should go further by providing meaningful incentives for sponsors to follow the recommendations outlined. The most meaningful incentive within current law would be that FDA make it clear that the agency will not approve medical products for all populations if the product was not adequately tested for safety and efficacy on sufficient numbers of patients representing major demographic subgroups.
National Center for Health Research can be reached at info@center4research.org or at (202) 223-4000.