A pediatric oncologist at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego has been awarded a $4 million research grant to expand a pilot program aimed at improving diversity in pediatric cancer clinical trials, it was announced Tuesday.
The National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute awarded the grant to Dr. Paula Aristizabal, who is also an associate professor of pediatrics in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at UC San Diego and Moores Cancer Center.
The original program — called COMPRENDO or Childhood Malignancy Peer Research Navigation — was established in 2018 and focused on reaching Hispanic families who “had historically demonstrated extremely low participation in clinical trials and inferior clinical outcomes when compared to non-Hispanic whites,” a statement from Rady read.
Curebound, a San Diego-based philanthropic organization focused on translational cancer research projects, funded the program with a $125,000 medical grant.
“We are thrilled with this additional funding,” Aristizabal said. “Now COMPRENDO will be able to grow and expand across the country to many diverse communities, where children will have better access to excellent care, as we have here in San Diego at Rady Children’s Hospital.”
The grant funding announced Tuesday is intended for “a culturally and linguistically tailored peer-navigation intervention to increase minority participation in pediatric cancer clinical trials.”
In that peer model, parents of children with cancer receive specialized training to work directly with parents of Hispanic children with cancer to help them navigate the cancer diagnosis and the option of receiving treatment as part of a clinical trial.
Aristizabal will expand her research in San Diego and add three new sites: Boston, San Francisco and Alabama.
“I have always been an advocate for the vulnerable,” she said. “My passion to improve care and survival in underserved children stems from witnessing health disparities firsthand.”
According to Rady, the long-term goal of the effort is to effectively translate discoveries and therapies for cancer equally, and, ultimately, improve clinical outcomes and survival among all ethnicities equitably.
–City News Service