The DHN Strategy

Let’s Set the Stage for Inclusion

At DHN, we believe that clinical trials should reflect the diversity in real-world patient populations. More importantly, the efficacy and safety data that support drug approvals need to be sufficiently robust to translate from patient populations enrolled in clinical trials to the larger, real-world patient populations.

We believe that clinical trials should reflect the diverse populations they aim to serve. Our goal is to break down barriers and ensure all communities have the opportunity to participate, benefit from, and be represented in research that shapes the future of healthcare while also offering a potential to increase life expectancy and/or quality of life.

Life expectancy can be influenced by various factors such as healthcare, lifestyle choices, economic conditions, access to education, and environmental factors. DHN's goal is to level these influences by helping to provide access to clinical trials.

We also believe that the organizations who run clinical trials should be positioned to substantiate - and document - the reliability and relevance of the data from having diverse participants in the studies they conduct and publish.

Overall, promoting diversity in clinical trials is not only beneficial for the organizations conducting the studies but also for society as a whole. It can lead to more robust research outcomes, improved healthcare practices, and better health outcomes for diverse populations.

Pillars of DHN’s Approach: Our three pillars of Community Engagement, Culturally-Responsive Recruitment, and Participant Retention are reflected in everything we do.

By emphasizing these three pillars - Community Engagement, Culturally-Responsive Recruitment, and Participant Retention - DHN’s goal is to help sponsors and academic centers conduct more inclusive, representative, and successful clinical trials that benefit both the research community and the participants involved.

Achieve Diversity through Intentional Processes with DHN

Our strategy is anchored in our three pillars: Community Engagement, Culturally-Responsive Recruitment, and Participant Retention. By integrating these elements into a cohesive strategy, we ensure that diversity is not just a checkbox, but a core outcome of clinical research.

Key Focus Areas:

Engagement, Recruitment and Retention Strategies: At DHN, our strategies involve establishing relationships and partnerships with the communities where clinical trials are conducted. With a focus on involving community members in the research process, understanding their needs and concerns, and ensuring that the research is relevant and beneficial to the community. By engaging with the community, researchers can build trust, increase participation and retention rates, and enhance the overall quality of the study. We collaborate with our clients to create tailored recruitment and retention strategies to connect with and engage underrepresented communities.

Partnerships and Collaborations: The DHN team combines subject matter expertise, our extensive partnership network and our On-Site Enrollment Specialists to achieve clinical trial success.

DHN’s On-Site Enrollment Specialists are dedicated professionals who work directly with academic centers and Investigators to help them meet participant recruitment and retention goals by directly engaging with DHN and bridging the gap between the community and the organization. Using refined strategies that prioritize transparency, trust and inclusivity, they cultivate environments where participants feel heard, valued and fully informed. This hands-on community-focused approach supports efficient and inclusive enrollment.

Our approach makes clinical research participation an accessible, informed, and self-empowering choice for all populations, thereby enhancing the inclusivity of our trials without adversely impacting enrollment. We are committed to fostering diversity in clinical trials through meaningful and authentic connections with diverse racial, ethnic, and social communities. By employing refined techniques to build trust and creating a sustainable ecosystem grounded in transparency, honesty, and integrity, we ensure that the patient’s voice is heard. Community Education: DHN uses a variety of methods to educate communities about clinical trials, ensuring everyone has access to the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. These methods include:

Collaborations with local leaders to amplify trust and reach.
Virtual town hall meetings to engage communities in open dialogue.
Easy access to information and resources on www.dhnrx.com.

Addressing Historical Mistrust: DHN's proactive and empathetic approach to addressing historical mistrust in clinical research involves acknowledging past injustices, building genuine relationships, fostering trust for the future, and engaging with communities in culturally sensitive ways. By prioritizing transparency, education, and community involvement, DHN can work towards overcoming barriers to participation and promoting inclusivity and diversity in research studies. Outreach Programs: Our expertise lies in designing and executing in-person and virtual outreach initiatives that meet communities where they are. Whether through neighborhood events, virtual platforms, or collaborations with trusted community figures, DHN is committed to ensuring that all voices are heard and represented in clinical trials. By creating trust-centered relationships and ensuring the inclusion of diverse communities, DHN strives to advance equitable healthcare outcomes and develop safe, effective medical treatments for all.

DHN has refined a range of recruitment techniques that are effective in ensuring that trials are inclusive and representative. Culturally Relevant: DHN has the ability to adapt recruitment techniques to ensure cultural relevance for underrepresented communities. Our approach is flexible, allowing us to meet changing study requirements and evolving population demographics, ensuring inclusive and meaningful participation. Language Accessibility: Another challenge to achieving diversity goals is language accessibility. DHN has resources to make multilingual recruitment materials available, as well as multilingual recruitment and engagement tools and personnel. Recruitment Team Training: We know that training is the key to ensuring the effectiveness of people in any endeavor - particularly in an area such as recruitment. DHN ensures that recruitment teams are trained to understand and respect cultural norms, and understand the unique barriers to participation faced by members of different communities.

We at DHN understand well that it does no good to recruit study participants who don’t complete their involvement with the study. Although it may sound obvious, we keep front-of-mind the idea that “A participant worth getting is worth keeping.” DHN has effective methods for retaining diverse participants throughout the duration of each clinical study.

Identifying Barriers to Retention: DHN continuously studies the various barriers to retention—both apparent and less obvious—and has developed comprehensive methods and techniques to address and remove these barriers. By understanding and mitigating these challenges, we ensure that our clinical trials remain inclusive and participant-friendly, thereby fostering diversity without negatively impacting enrollment Participant Trust and Engagement: We know that trust is important in the recruiting process, but it is also critical to retaining participants. DHN has approaches to maintaining participant trust and engagement throughout each trial that include - and go beyond - the ongoing contact and communication that are essential to participant retention. Resources for Participants: Often, willing participants who intend to continue their participation in studies encounter obstacles to their engagement. DHN collaborates with partners and organizations to provide resources to participants to alleviate participation burdens, and support long-term involvement. Such resources include:

transportation
child care
medical and health-care services

Core Pillars

Measuring Impact

Tracking Diversity and Representation

It is not enough to claim that your programs and techniques are being effective - you need to show it. DHN places importance on measuring success, and uses tools and systems to ensure transparency in tracking results.

DHN recognizes that each community outreach is unique and changes throughout time. We continuously change or refresh our programs and approach based upon the various factors within the community we are approaching. At DHN, we are committed to the continuous improvement of the strategies we employ to enhance representation. To that end, in addition to sharing the metrics and analytics from studies with stakeholders, we analyze and evaluate these data within our team. We use this information to understand where we’re excelling - and identify opportunities to further refine our techniques, and expand our approaches.

Looking Forward: Our Vision for the Future

At DHN, we are always looking ahead. Our vision for the future of diverse clinical research is a world where all individuals have access to safe, effective treatments, based on equitable representation.

Measuring Success: For DHN, success looks like medical research and clinical trials that accurately reflect the true diversity of the population.

Refining Our Approaches: We never stand still. We continuously evolve our approaches, tools, and systems. We’re committed to making the vision stated above a reality through sustained effort, innovation, and collaboration.

Working Together: We recognize that we cannot achieve our immediate goals, or our long-term objectives - alone. It is only through collaboration with our partners, stakeholders and community leaders, that we can realize the vision of equitable health and wellness for all.

Request a proposal for Diversity Health NetwoRx to lead from the front or support from the back. Diversity in healthcare matters and sometimes we only have one chance to get it right. We are stronger together.

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How can we work together?

The DHN Strategy

Let’s Set the Stage for Inclusion

Achieve Diversity through Intentional Processes with DHN

Subject Matter Expertise

Extensive Partnership Network

On-Site Enrollment Specialists

Pillar 1: Community Engagement

Pillar 2: Culturally-Responsive Recruitment

Pillar 3: Retention Effectiveness

Core Pillars

Measuring Impact

Tracking Diversity and Representation

Approach to Metrics

Reporting on Diversity Outcomes

Continuous Improvement

Looking Forward: Our Vision for the Future

Contact Us for Proposals