LA Hospitals Are Looking For Vaccine Trial Participants Among Their High-Risk Patients

Dr. Eric Dahl’s hospital patients are determined to confirm that they are at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19 and are part of their efforts to combat this illness.

He also wants them to be able to protect themselves in the process.

When Dahl and his colleagues at Harbor UCLA Medical Center announced Wednesday that they would also begin enrolling in a trial to test the COVID-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca, they would also be in a community-based hospital. Reveal recruitment strategy.

Harbor-UCLA wants to recruit most, if not all, of the 500 participants in the trial from those at high risk who are already being treated. People over the age of 65, people with chronic illnesses, members of races or ethnic groups with poor services. Hospital officials also hope that recruitment will not be easy.

“Ensuring that our community is adequately represented in these trials is a priority and obligation,” said Harvar-UCLA Head of HIV Medicine and UCLA-related Lunddist research. Dahle is focusing on the COVID-19 vaccine, which he said he discontinued other research projects last spring.

The Safety Net Hospital in Torrance, California, serves patients primarily in the Black, Latin, and Pacific Islands of the Los Angeles County South Bay area. Many live in crowded homes and do “mandatory” work that requires them to be exposed to the virus to make a living.

This region has a high incidence of heart disease and stroke.

“If no community is involved in the trial, it’s hard to estimate the outcome in the community,” said one of Daar’s colleagues, Dr. Katya Corado. “We want to find something that protects our patients and loved ones.”

American Latin Americans and blacks Almost three times They are more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than non-Hispanic whites and are nearly five times more likely to be hospitalized for this disease. To Los Angeles County, Latin Americans in particular, were over attacked by the virus.

8 of 10 According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, national deaths from COVID-19 occur among people over the age of 65.

Historically, blacks and Latin Americans have been less likely to be included in clinical trials for disease treatment, despite federal guidelines encouraging minority and senior participation.

The National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration urge infectious disease researchers to focus on these vulnerable populations in a large Phase 3 trial that tests how vaccines prevent COVID-19. It was

Harbor UCLA, a public education hospital owned and operated by the County of Los Angeles, is one of nearly 100 facilities nationwide that test AstraZeneca vaccine candidates, which was developed in collaboration with Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Phase III trials of similar size are already underway for vaccine candidates manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer. Each of the three companies is recruiting 30,000 people, of which 20,000 will receive the vaccine, 10,000 will receive placebo or harmless saline, and test whether the vaccine will prevent coronavirus disease ..

The recruitment at Harbor UCLA includes patients with well-controlled chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure, as well as HIV patients who have their medications suppressed the virus, Dahl said.

According to the AstraZeneca clinical trial protocol, patients earn up to $100 every 15-20 visits during a 2-year study. The Harbor-UCLA team also provides car services to bring people to hospitals through LA transportation.

Daar plans to distribute leaflets to clinics and community organizations to reach targeted new employees, as well as create targeted social media campaigns and promote them for free.

So far, recruitment of high-risk patients in other COVID-19 trials has been mixed. Modelna, who started the first phase 3 trial of the vaccine on July 27, Announced on friday To date, 18% of over 13,000 registrants have been Black, Latin American, or Native American. Although high in clinical trials, this is only about one-third of the goals set by NIH staff.

Other AstraZeneca trial sites have also announced efforts to approach those at highest risk from the virus. The University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine has located one of Vernon’s AstraZeneca recruitment sites south of downtown Los Angeles in an area with many factories and meat processing plants that have experienced high COVID-19 prevalence. ..

Clinicians attribute high rates of minority illness and hospitalization to health conditions, such as inadequate treatment of diabetes and heart disease, and increased exposure to the virus at work and in crowded homes. I am. Environmental factors such as polluted areas can also have an impact.

There is little evidence that the vaccine affects blacks and Latins differently than whites, but the subject has not been studied in practice, says Akilah Jefferson, an allergic/immunologist and bioethicist at Arkansas School of Medicine. Dr. Shah says. That’s another reason to ensure these groups are well represented in court, she said.

“We now know that there is a subgroup response to drugs by gender, but no one understood it until women began participating in these studies,” Jefferson Shah said. “Race is not genetic. It’s a social structure. But there are more common genetic variations in certain populations. I don’t know unless we look.”

Perhaps most importantly, research diversity is needed to establish vaccine confidence and uptake. so Vote Only 25% of blacks and 37% of Hispanics will definitely seek vaccination against coronaviruses, compared to 56% of whites, according to people at the Associated Press NORC Public Relations Research Center.

In July, the Harbor-UCLA Vaccine Team holds weekly zoom meetings with about 25 activists and clergy members to learn what the community is saying about vaccines and how to design educational materials for clinical trials. I got a hint.

What they have heard suggests that they will have a difficult recruiting battle.

HIV activist Dontá Morrison, a member of the community council, said people are often on social media and that vaccines are designed to give COVID-19 as part of a plan to eliminate black voters. It was (None of the vaccines contains the infectious COVID virus.)

“It may seem difficult, but they are conversations because we have a regime that we cannot trust,” Morrison said.

He said the first challenge facing UCLA researchers was to persuade community leaders, especially clergy, about vaccine safety. Church leaders worried that if the vaccine would make their meetings sick, they would be accused of upholding the case, he said.

Morrison said that, if done right, a minority can build confidence in medicine while helping the minority find themselves and other ourselves a way out of the current turmoil.

Dr. Rafael Landwitz, another UCLA scientist working on the case, agreed.

“We want people to understand that if this succeeds, it’s an opportunity to regain some power and control in this situation, where many of us feel very helpless,” he said. It was

this KHN First published story California Health Line, Services California Healthcare Foundation..

This article was reprinted from khn.org With the permission of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a bipartisan health care policy research organization unrelated to Kaiser Permanente.