Our mission is to bridge the gap between underserved cancer patients and their healthcare providers; and to encourage inclusive clinical trials and other cancer research. This will be achieved through advocacy, education, and support for the breast cancer community.
A clinical trial is a research study that partners with patients to evaluate new ways to prevent, detect, and treat disease. For cancer, trials help discover safer and more effective options—and make today’s care better for tomorrow’s patients.
Sharon Rivera Sanchez is proud to be a part of clinical trials as an African American. Representation matters in research, and by participating,she is helping to ensure that diverse voices are heard in the development of new treatments. Together, we can break down barriers and make a difference in healthcare.
They all relied on clinical trials to prove they’re safe and effective.
Every approved cancer treatment we have today started in a clinical trial.
Learn how trials work and whether one could be right for you.
Different trials answer different questions—from detection and prevention to treatment and quality of life.
Treatment trials, also called interventional trials, are clinical trials that test treatments in their pre-approval stage. Treatment trials are generally carried out in two sets of phases—the early phases determine whether or not new treatments are safe, and whether they have any side effects; the later Phases are aimed at finding out whether the new Treatment is more effective than the existing remedy.
Screening trials are similar to diagnostic trials with a few key differences. Unlike diagnostic trials, which are carried out to check for the presence or absence of a medical condition for treatment purposes, screening trials check for early disease or risk factors for disease using a large number of healthy individuals.
As the name suggests, Prevention trials are aimed at testing if a particular medical condition can be prevented in individuals. If people already have the condition, then prevention trials test ways to stop them from reoccurring. Unlike treatment trials which often require test subjects with pre-existing conditions, volunteers for Prevention trials are usually healthy individuals of all ages and backgrounds.
Palliative Care improves the quality of life of patients and their families’ facing problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification, assessment, and treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial, and spiritual issues.
Diagnostic trials aim to find efficient ways to detect and diagnose medical conditions. Diagnostic trials usually involve people who display symptoms of the medical condition being studied as well as those with no pre-existing conditions to establish positive and negative screening tests.
Applies mainly to rare diseases. This study collects information about the natural history (progression) of a disease in the absence of an intervention, from the disease’s onset until either its resolution or the individual’s death. Although knowledge of a disease’s natural history can benefit drug development for many disorders and conditions, natural history information is usually not available or is incomplete for most rare diseases; therefore, natural history information is particularly needed for these diseases.
Quality of life trials (or supportive care trials) explore and measure ways to improve the comfort and quality of life of people with conditions or illnesses.
Do you know that the consent form can be a barrier to one joining a clinical trial?
This year’s DIA, I had the opportunity of speaking and sharing my recent clinical trial experience ( which happens to be my fourth trial) with our panel with Jennifer Kim
Our panel also delved into the results from a recent Merck-funded study on the hurdles patients of color must overcome even after they qualify for a clinical trial study.
Ashley D. Freeman facilitates a panel discussion on how several providers make shared decision making a reality in their practices and how one patient has turned her experience with triple negative breast cancer and clinical trials has made her an effective advocate for patient-centered care
