These Founders Are Behind A Digital Health Equity Company To Increase Representation In Clinical Research – AfroTech
After seeing the consequences of the underrepresentation of Black communities in clinical trials, these founders built a platform to help close the gap.
According to BlackDoctor, Tiffany Whitlow was a teenager when her son was diagnosed with asthma. He was prescribed three medications, including albuterol, she recalled. Specifically, albuterol was 47% less effective in Black patients, which she didn’t know at the time.
“We weren’t represented in those studies,” she told BlackDoctor. “A researcher from the albuterol team told us they tried to get representation but couldn’t, and there was no mandate requiring it.”
Whitlow, a native of Alabama, spoke to the fears many in the Black community have about clinical trials, as they may immediately think of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in the state. This was a study that went on for 40 years and led to many Black men undergoing painful spinal taps without being told they had syphilis, which can lead blindness, heart failure, and even death, according to Stanford Health Policy. They were never treated for the STD even when penicillin was proven to be affective, Stanford noted.
“While we acknowledge that history, we have to recognize that we have Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in place now to protect people. We can’t be afraid of being part of the future just because we are thinking about the past,” Whitlow said, according to BlackDoctor.
Acclinate
Whitlow, who brings a decade of business management experience, launched Acclinate to bring to market a solution designed with the Black community and men in mind. She serves as chief development officer while Del Smith is co-founder and CEO. His why is also tied to family.
“My mother was a nurse who contracted tuberculosis while caring for others in their communities. She passed away before our family ever learned that a clinical trial existed for her condition. The information was out there. The trust and access that would have gotten her there weren’t. That gap between knowledge, access, and trust is what Acclinate was built to close,” he said on LinkedIn.
Acclinate is a Birmingham, AL-based digital health equity company. It has a trust-first approach and is rooted in a mission that “clinical trials and genomic research should be a true representation of the world we live in,” Whitlow expressed on LinkedIn.
“We reach and motivate underrepresented communities by pairing culturally grounded engagement with real-time behavioral data that shows who is ready to take action and why, because you can’t mobilize people you haven’t first earned trust with,” a statement on the company website read.
The company recently announced a partnership with HCN Global, a culture-driven, data-informed multicultural health communications agency, according to a press release.
Together, Acclinate and HCN Global will deploy trusted digital and grassroots activations across Black and Hispanic communities to advance education and build trust, with the hope of increasing participation in clinical trials.
Additionally, HCN Global is a licensed user of Acclinate’s e-DICT™ platform, with API integration across HCN Global’s owned channel making it useful for sponsors and public health agencies in the following areas: tracking engagement, measuring trust, and predicting clinical trial readiness across networks.
“This is the relationships-based infrastructure the industry has been missing,” HCN Global CEO Alison Rodden said in the press release.
Acclinate is scaling and has activations occurring in the following cities: Atlanta; Chicago; Huntsville, AL; and Philadelphia.
