{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr1-travel-lodging-in-every-budget","kind":"idea","name":"Travel, lodging and meals reimbursed as a standard line in every trial budget","aka":[],"tldr":"People should not have to pay to be in a trial. Sponsors would routinely cover travel, hotel and food costs, paid up front rather than claimed back, which is already accepted by regulators as fair rather than coercive.","summary":"Every trial budget includes a participant-cost line administered by a third party, prepaid where possible, covering travel, parking, lodging, meals and a companion. The FDA's position is that reimbursement for expenses is not undue influence. Charities such as the Lazarex Cancer Foundation have shown that covering these costs raises enrolment among low-income patients; the idea is to make sponsor funding of it universal, with ethics committees expecting it.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"FDA: Payment and Reimbursement to Research Subjects","url":"https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/payment-and-reimbursement-research-subjects"},{"label":"Lazarex Cancer Foundation","url":"https://lazarex.org/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-trial-enrolment","b-trial-diversity"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Trials with prepaid participant-cost coverage will enrol a larger share of patients from low-income postcodes and have lower dropout than matched trials without it.","rationale":"Out-of-pocket costs are a documented barrier and fall hardest on poorer and minority patients. Reimbursement is cheap relative to per-patient trial cost.","test":"Sponsor-level natural experiment: compare enrolment demographics and retention before and after a portfolio-wide reimbursement policy, adjusting for indication.","maturity":"being-tested-at-scale","actor":"industry","cost":"medium","horizonYears":1},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr1-travel-lodging-in-every-budget/","neighbours":{"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-trial-diversity","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trials do not represent the people who get cancer","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-diversity/"},{"id":"b-trial-enrolment","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Trials enrol too few, too slowly","route":"/bottlenecks/b-trial-enrolment/"}]}}