{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr1-diverse-investigator-pipeline","kind":"idea","name":"Fund investigators from under-represented communities and community sites to lead trials","aka":[],"tldr":"Patients are more likely to join a trial when the doctor offering it looks like them or works in their community. Funding more such doctors to become trial leaders would change who is enrolled.","summary":"Career development awards, protected time and mentorship for oncologists from under-represented groups and those practising in community, rural and safety-net settings, tied to becoming principal investigators. Cooperative groups set targets for the share of PIs from these backgrounds. Evidence that racial concordance and community-based investigators raise minority enrolment is observational but consistent.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Trials do not represent the people who get cancer): Loree et al., Disparity of race reporting and representation in trials leading to cancer drug approvals (JAMA Oncology 2019)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaoncol.2019.1870"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["nci","asco","aacr"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-trial-diversity","b-workforce"],"keyPapers":["paper-loree-jama-oncol"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Sites led by investigators from under-represented groups or based in community settings will enrol a higher share of minority and low-income participants, and increasing their number will shift network-level representativeness.","rationale":"Investigator distribution mirrors academic centre demographics; recruitment relationships run through clinicians. Workforce interventions have long lags but compound.","test":"Fund 50 awards over five years and compare enrolment demographics at awardees' sites with matched non-awardee sites.","maturity":"early-clinical","actor":"philanthropy","cost":"medium","horizonYears":5},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr1-diverse-investigator-pipeline/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"aacr","kind":"institution","name":"American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)","route":"/institutions/aacr/"},{"id":"asco","kind":"institution","name":"American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)","route":"/institutions/asco/"},{"id":"nci","kind":"institution","name":"National Cancer Institute (NIH)","route":"/institutions/nci/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-workforce","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists","route":"/bottlenecks/b-workforce/"},{"id":"b-trial-diversity","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trials do not represent the people who get cancer","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-diversity/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-loree-jama-oncol","kind":"paper","name":"Disparity of Race Reporting and Representation in Clinical Trials Leading to Cancer Drug Approvals From 2008 to 2018","route":"/key-papers/paper-loree-jama-oncol/"}]}}