Description

The Lustgarten Foundation’s Equity, Accessibility, and Diversity (LEAD) Project addresses disparities in pancreatic cancer across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. It aims to increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups in clinical trials and expand research resources that reflect the full spectrum of the disease. Underrepresentation in trials also limits the diversity of cell models and genomic data, potentially obscuring disease heterogeneity.

The program supports intentional efforts to identify participation barriers and develop practical tools, including community outreach, patient education, and clinical recruitment support. Clinical proposals should set specific, achievable, measurable recruitment and retention goals. Non-clinical proposals may analyze or expand existing datasets to include minority patient groups and improve understanding of pancreatic cancer heterogeneity across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.