Collaborating with Clinical Research Centers to Increase Diversity in Clinical Studies

Genentech is accelerating inclusive research in the U.S. through new and expanded relationships with more clinical research centers.

In 2022, we expanded our Advancing Inclusive Research^® (AIR) Site Alliance. Genentech established this alliance in 2021 with leading research centers that excel at dismantling barriers for underrepresented patients to participate in clinical studies. Genentech and these centers share best practices with the goal of co-creating patient-centered solutions that can scale across all clinical studies.

Our inaugural four oncology centers in the AIR Site Alliance are:

City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, CA
Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio in San Antonio, TX
O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, AL
West Cancer Center in Memphis, TN

In 2022, Genentech invited three new centers to join the AIR Site Alliance. Montefiore Einstein Medical Center in Bronx, NY, and University of Illinois, Chicago in Chicago, IL are both oncology centers, along with the first ophthalmology center, Wagner Kapoor Research Institute in Virginia Beach, VA.

The AIR Site Alliance is connected by a shared commitment to build trust with underrepresented populations. For Dr. Kapil Kapoor, M.D., FACS, Co-Founder and President of the Wagner Kapoor Research Institute and his colleagues, that disruption means setting up 12 satellite clinics in strategic places: communities where historically underserved people in coastal Virginia live. "We felt passionately that our patients and our community should be able to gain access to any innovative treatment locally," Dr. Kapoor says.

Through the Sight Forever community outreach program, the Wagner Kapoor team works with community leaders at churches and elsewhere to reach patients who might be reluctant to seek medical care. "They trust the bishop, then they trust us, then they trust our clinical team and research studies," says Dr. Kapoor.

Together, Genentech and the AIR Site Alliance centers have developed two new approaches to support patients:

Enhanced Patient Support, which established a new financial model enhancing subject recruitment and retention services to increase trial participation of underrepresented groups and address the financial burdens of participation.

AIR Healthcare Provider Education, a novel program that enables clinical staff to engage more effectively with underrepresented communities, by providing an understanding of the history and drivers of health inequity and disparities and building cultural humility with scenario-based practices.

"This is a patient-first, community-oriented approach to educate and invite diverse populations to participate in clinical research."
Nicole Richie, Ph.D. Executive Director, Portfolio & People Leader, Global Head, Health Equity & Population Science, Product Development

More broadly, the AIR Site Alliance is serving as a model of collaboration that others in the industry can use to help address health inequities.