In the second week of April, I headed to San Francisco where I took part in the SWOG Semi-Annual Meeting. To those who might be unfamiliar with us, SWOG is a member organization of the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) and is tasked in running clinical trials across disease sites and scenarios, from prevention to treatment to survivorship and palliative care. Those involved in SWOG come from across the country twice a year to meet, learn, teach, and plan — all of this in the most interactive and inclusive way possible. Thanks to the leadership in our patient advocacy group (shout out to Wendy Lawton and Rick Bangs!), patient advocates, who are embedded more and more into aspects of trial design at its earliest point, are important contributors to this meeting.
The goal is to launch clinical trials across the country, and once that happens, to ensure they successfully accrue. We spend a lot of time trying to improve accrual — making sure our investigators open as many trials as possible, supporting them once that happens, and then raising awareness among our patients, communicating in a way that is straightforward and clear, without overly relying on scientific and technical lingo. As I prepared for the SWOG meeting, I was reminded of one thing: that we as clinicians can sometimes be our own barrier to trial accrual.
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