REACH: Researching & Enhancing Access to Clinical trials in Veterans with Hematologic cancers
Daphne Friedman
MDDurham VA Health Care System
Project Term: July 1, 2025 - June 30, 2030
Cancer clinical trials (CTs) provide high-quality care and are important for advancing treatment options, yet most Veterans Administration (VA) facilities do not have CTs available for veterans with blood cancer and face challenges in enrolling veterans on the CTs that do exist. With an innovative, multi-faceted approach to supporting VA research teams as well as educating and assisting veterans, this study will address barriers at the institutional, clinician, and patient levels to increase enrollment of veterans with blood cancer on CTs.
Cancer clinical trials (CTs) provide high-quality care and are important for advancing treatment options, yet less than 10% of cancer patients participate. The Veterans Administration (VA) diagnoses approximately 50,000 cases of invasive cancer each year. Veterans are more likely to have comorbidities and live in rural areas, which are two known barriers to CT enrollment. A limited number of VA facilities offer cancer CTs, and the cancer CTs that are offered are most often focused on common cancers such as lung and prostate cancer. These barriers limit the ability to enroll veterans in cancer CTs, especially veterans with rare cancers such as blood cancers. This study aims to increase the number of therapeutic clinical trials for veterans with blood cancers in the VA and to increase enrollment of veterans on these trials across 12 participating VA facilities by expanding the clinical trial portfolio, providing clinical trial navigation, and implementation of a patient matching dashboard that helps research coordinators identify and assess trial eligibility.