ESTRO 2024 - Abstract Book

S50 ESTRO 2024 Staff became more confident working with LGBTQIA service users, which was an additional benefit from this project, this increased confidence was noticed in 20% of staff who completed the survey. At the completion of the pilot study the results were presented at local and divisional quality and safety meetings as well as the hospital’s radiation safety committee. Following the success of the pilot, there was agreement to make this a permanent change within the radiotherapy department with immediate effect. Conclusion: The inclusive pregnancy form process has been embedded as standard practice in our department since the end of 2022, and continues to present no issues. The implementation has been celebrated throughout the trust with advice being sought from other departments and hospitals on how to proceed for their areas. Invited Speaker

Next steps: Continue to strive towards inclusivity by making the form more accessible for patients with a language barrier or additional needs.

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Inclusivity in trials

Georgiana Synesi

The Institute of Cancer Research, Clinical Trials and Statistics Unit, London, United Kingdom

Abstract:

Clinical trial participants should appropriately represent the wider population who would benefit from the trial intervention. Failing to consider inclusivity during design and recruitment may limit our understanding of disease mechanisms, the generalisability of findings, and importantly, equitable access to clinical trials. Groups who do not often participate in clinical trials are referred to as underserved groups. The INCLUDE project (conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Research) identified several underserved groups in clinical research based on demographic factors, socioeconomic factors, health status, and disease-specific factors. However, the ability to identify underserved groups amongst UK clinical trial participants is limited by a dearth of published demographic data. This is even more apparent when considering oncology trials. There is a lack of standardisation regarding which demographic data should be routinely collected from trial participants. Historically, there has been a focus on collecting data which directly addresses the research question to avoid over-burdening participants and research teams. However, there may be value in collecting a range of demographic data for the purpose of monitoring inclusivity of the design and recruitment processes of clinical trials. The consideration of inclusivity in trials by a variety of stakeholders has yielded guidance and recommendations to address the underrepresentation of certain groups. However, there is little quantitative data on which groups are underserved and few examples of successful evidence-based interventions. Through a PhD studentship being conducted at the Institute of Cancer Research Clinical trials and Statistics Unit (ICR-CTSU), we hope to develop and pilot recruitment interventions aimed at increasing the representation of underserved groups. To identify potentially underserved groups in national bladder (n = 4 trials; 911 participants) and head & neck (n = 6 trials; 990 participants) radiotherapy trials managed by the ICR-CTSU, we compared demographic data of trial participants with published national demographic data from the population who had received radiotherapy treatment for bladder cancer and head & neck cancers respectively. Analyses were conducted separately for each