Getting more black women into cancer trials ‘not a marketing campaign, it’s a movement’

Ricki Fairley, CEO of Touch, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance is a force of nature. She channels that power to facilitate change in outcomes for black women with breast cancer through the When We Tri(al) initiative.

With black women dying at a rate of 41% more than white women for the same diagnosis, this change is needed and urgent.

The when we try (al) collaboration with Breastcancer.org launched on January 26 on Facebook and blackdoctor.org. the an eventHosted by April Ryan, White House Correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief for theGrio, featured Fairley, Patient Navigator Valarie Worthy, and Prosper/Patient Advocate Karen Peterson discussing the importance of engaging Black women in clinical trials for the treatment of breast cancer.

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Black women made up just 3% of clinical trial participants for approved breast cancer drugs from 2008 to 2018. As a result, Fairley says many drugs don’t work for black women, many of whom have different types of breast cancer. cancers or simply do not react favorably.

Fairley, herself a triple-negative breast cancer survivor, speaks quickly, forcefully, and earnestly about the importance and need of bringing black “Breasties” into breast cancer drug trials.

“I want black women to understand — and the whole point of When We Tri(al) is to let them know it’s a good and safe thing for you to do,” Fairley said. “You get better care, you get more attention…and you advance science for your own health and for the health of our community,” she said.

To achieve her goal, Fairley goes “where black women work, live, play and pray.” This means reaching out to community organizations, sororities, HBUs and churches, as she says the first port of call for many black women after a diagnosis is their pastor asking them to “pray for me.” While Fairley has no problem with that, she also wants to arm pastors with information so that when women ask, the pastor prays but also directs them to the websitewhich offers a plethora of information, including links to search for clinical trials.

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In addition to this awareness, Touch has a highly targeted digital marketing plan focused on black boobs on Facebook and Instagram as well as black women in general in hopes of reaching them before diagnosis. Fairley also co-hosts a weekly web series, “The Doctor Is In” on blackdoctor.org.

Pharmaceutical companies, including Roche’s Genentech, Bristol Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, Seagen, Daiichi-Sankyo and Eisai, are all fully on board with the mission, while channeling financial tributes.

Fairly says they are listening and working to meet the needs of black women with breast cancer. Merck and Gilead are currently working together on a trial targeting triple-negative breast cancer, which is more likely to affect black women and often young black women (premammography).

For Fairley, mission is everything.

“It’s not a marketing campaign, it’s a movement. I want people to be moved. I want to intervene in our lives. It is an intervention that I want to give you something and make you own it.