Historically, there were few challenges in recruiting healthy volunteers for vaccine research, with minimal patient requirements. In a post-COVID era, enrolling patients in vaccine studies has proven to be more challenging, accounting for vaccine misinformation and hesitancy, along with patient fatigue regardless of whether the study is related to COVID-19. In addition to these challenges, there’s a stronger focus on diversity and inclusion in clinical research, aiming for a study’s patient population to resembles the indication’s prevalence among different groups.
This webinar will present and discuss the current landscape of patient enrollment in vaccine clinical trials, the importance of considering patient diversity early, and a thoughtful approach to keeping a research naïve patient population engaged to increase study compliance, and minimise disruption and delays.
The participants will learn the following during the presentation:
How to overcome vaccine fatigue and hesitancy in a post-COVID era:
- How to reach patients that may be burnt-out on vaccine information
- Overcoming vaccine misinformation and safety concerns
Develop a recruitment strategy for a diverse patient group
- Site selection to maximise diversity
- Patient centricity to keep patients engaged
- Supporting patient groups that may be research naïve
Speakers
Dinah Knotts-Keeterle
Vice President, Accellacare Site Network
Dinah Knotts-Keeterle has been working in the clinical research industry for more than 25 years and leads the Accellacare Site Network for North America. She started her career working as a study coordinator then moved to the CRO side as a CRA and progressed in various study leadership roles.
Dinah has been at ICON for more than 11 years and has held many leadership roles across multiple therapeutic areas including oncology, cardiovascular, rare disease, vaccines, dermatology, CNS and gastrointestinal. Dinah led the operational delivery of the first Pfizer COVID vaccine study with over 48,000 subjects enrolled, receiving Emergency Use Authorization in an unprecedented 247 days and full FDA approval in record time.
Dinah holds a BA in Mathematics from Purdue University and Post Graduate Diploma in International Business Management, University College of Dublin, Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
Nazneen Qureshi
Director, Patient Recruitment Accellacare Site Network
Nazneen Qureshi is the Director of Patient Recruitment at Accellacare, where she oversees all patient engagement & recruitment activities for the US. She is committed to developing a patient centric framework as she builds the centralized marketing & recruitment function - with focus on driving engaged, motivated participants and advocates for clinical research. Qureshi has over 10 years of experience in patient recruitment and was the recipient of the SCRS 2017 Site Patient Recruitment Innovation Achievement Award.
April Coburn, vaccine expert available for Q&A
Associate Director of Scientific Affairs – Site Activation Liaison
April has over 16 years' experience working in clinical research across all phases and therapeutic areas within the CRO space. April was involved in the development of a Site Partnerships group at ICON, managing the CRO relationship with key site network contributors, and creating processes and new relationships to ensure KPIs were met across the company. She additionally served as Study Start-Up SME for a COVID-19 Bidding and Operations Team, where processes for decreased Start-Up times were developed to support incoming COVID trials. April now works to leverage site relationships at the RFP stage to ensure ICON can provide accurate projected enrollment rates, site participation data, and protocol feedback to Sponsors to increase our new business awards. She has had an article on establishing and strengthening site partnerships published in the SCRS InSite Journal and served as a judge for the SCRS Site Patient Recruitment Innovation Award in 2022.
Audience
Professionals in the following areas in the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device or CRO spaces:
- Clinical Development
- Project Management
- Clinical Operations
- Procurement
- Outsourcing
- Strategy and Innovation
- Protocol Development
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Patient-Centric Innovation
- Business Operations
- Data Management
- Scientists and Biostatisticians
- Decentralised Clinical Trial Operations
- Clinical Science
- Outcomes research
- Clinical trial planning and optimization
- Medical Affairs
- Site managers