Oftentimes, health outcomes depend on factors beyond the control of patients and their doctors. Disparities across age, gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic level are some examples.
Biogen’s approach toward health equity involves researching and understanding these issues as well as their compounding factors, such as inadequate representation in clinical trials and limitations to accessing care. Overall, the goal is clear: improve health outcomes for Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, and other underserved communities in Biogen’s main disease areas.
Issues of cultural awareness and mistrust remain prevalent alongside a host of other considerations prior to enrollment in a clinical trial. To address these issues, Biogen uses a multi-channeled health equity strategy which includes incorporating diverse community perspectives and insights into our drug development and engaging with communities by partnering with organizations to educate, build awareness, establish trust, and drive health equity.
When recruiting for clinical trials, Biogen teams are building patient engagement strategies, including setting race and ethnicity recruitment targets for their trials that reflect the patient populations they intend to treat. These targets are supported by robust DE&I and patient-focused drug development strategies. The results are clear with 2021 having 100% of studies in the United States including a plan to recruit participants from underrepresented communities to ensure the study population is representative of the intended treatment population.
Biogen has also fostered employee collaboration to increase awareness of health equity needs cross-functionally. In 2021, they introduced a Health Equity Ideas Cafe Series to deepen organization-wide understanding of Biogen’s commitment, including representation in clinical trials and equitable access.
Biogen’s approach to health equity is guided by the motivation to help those who have historically been underserved. Concretely, this commitment to health equity looks like: clinical trial diversity, empowering underrepresented groups, engaging employees, and launching new tools to improve accessibility. To learn more, visit Biogen Trial Link.