Improving Access to Clinical Trials for Women: IMPACT-W
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving the recruitment of females to clinical trials; A qualitative study to explore the barriers and facilitators to female recruitment in clinical trials.
IRAS ID
351107
Contact name
Laura Hermann
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Hull, PVC-Research and Enterprise
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 7 months, 21 days
Research summary
The question I aim to answer
I want to find out why not enough women (females) take part in research and to
develop a set of recommendations to improve this.
I aim to improve the health of women by making treatments that have been developed
from research more relevant to them.Why is it important?
Women spend more of their lives in poor health than men, and this is getting worse.
Clinical trials can help improve health, but women are often under-served in them.
Clinical trials usually compare a new treatment against an existing treatment to see
which is best. Being ‘under-served’ means fewer women take part in clinical trials than
expected, this is worse for women with a low income. If women are under-served in
trials testing new treatments, we won’t know if these treatments improve women’s health.What I plan to do
I will try to find out why women are not part of research studies as often as they should
be.
I will conduct interviews and focus groups with women who have declined to take part in a clinical trial, women from the wider public, who may have never been approached to take part in a trial, staff from clinical sites responsible for approaching people for trial participation, and people who design clinical trials. I will recruit participants from a sample of clinical trials running in clinical trials units across the UK and the public. I will speak with participants once for around 60 – 90 minutes. I will also examine documents from clinical trials related to the trial plan, and the information potential participants see.
This study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).This application describes four populations in the study sample. HRA approval is only being sought for the recruitment of clinical staff (NHS) and NHS patients.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/EE/0230
Date of REC Opinion
31 Oct 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion