Private doctor’s offices reflect the diversity of their clinical trial patients better than academic medical centers and community hospitals, according to a new survey of nearly 3,200 trial sites around the world.

Almost half of the staff surveyed at independent sites and private practices in the United States are representative of minority populations, while academic medical centers and community hospitals hover around one-third. In Europe, the number is radically different; almost all (93%) of the survey site staff are white.

That’s according to new data released Tuesday by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, based at the university’s medical school.

One of the main goals of the survey was to map the diversity of global survey sites, said Ken Getz, professor and director of the center, in an interview with Fierce CRO.

“Hard to believe, but it’s never been done before, so we really wanted to collect some background information,” Getz said. The study, which compiled information from 3,187 different testing sites around the world, lasted about six to seven months, he added. About 50% were in the United States, 33% in Europe, and 17% elsewhere.

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Getz said it was not surprising to see that the race and ethnicity of site staff correlated with those of patients enrolled at the site.

“This is one of those studies where I think, for a very long time, clinical research professionals have intuitively known that this relationship exists between site staff and study volunteers enrolled in our trials,” said declared Getz. “This study, our study, basically corroborates that intuition and provides hard data and evidence to show how strong this relationship really is.”

In US private practices, approximately 56% of site staff are White, 22% are Black / African American, 11% are Latinx, 8% are Asian, and 5% fall into other categories. In university and community hospital settings, white staff make up 68% of the staff.

Vaccines were the most diverse therapeutic area, with 54.8% of site staff being White, 24.2% Latinx, 9.8% Black or African American, and 7.7% Asian.

The study found that as the diversity of site staff increases, the diverse composition of patients increases.

With greater diversity among its ranks and files, sites are more likely to designate diversity as critical to success and have operational procedures in place to support such efforts, the study concluded.

Patient-staff diversity is expected to remain a central area of ​​focus even as trials become more virtual, Getz said.

“Our study here also really suggests that as more trials begin to adopt remote and virtual approaches, this relationship between site staff, whether in person or remotely, should always reflect the diversity of the population that the site serves, ”said Getz. noted.