What We Do
ENACCT's mission is to improve access to cancer clinical trials through education and collaboration with communities, health care providers, and researchers.
Our work seeks to:
1. Improve the quality of patient care by increasing access to clinical trials, which are a key part of access to the best care.
2. Build active and energetic community networks of health care professionals to work within communities nationwide to advocate for clinical trials.
3. Educate community-based organizations, especially those working with people from minority and medically underserved groups, about the importance of cancer clinical trials for their community; and
4. Change local organizational practices, relationships, and/ or policies to help more prospective patients to be offered and have positive experiences with cancer clinical trials as a part of quality cancer care.
WHY ENACCT?
Clinical trials help to move basic scientific research from the laboratory to treatment centers. By evaluating the results of these trials, scientists can find better treatments and ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases like cancer.
But, very few adults with cancer - fewer than 5 percent - participate in clinical trials. This rate is even lower among racial and ethnic minority groups and low income groups, who tend to have higher cancer mortality rates than the population as a whole.
ENACCT is the only national organization solely devoted to evidence-based community-centered approaches to cancer clinical trials education and is uniquely qualified to undertake this work. In our years of supporting and evaluating community based initiatives on cancer clinical trials, ENACCT has come to understand that in order to increase accrual rates, especially for minorities and the medically underserved, we must:
• Change knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors on the part of primary care providers and non-participating oncologists
• Change the way clinical research institutions relate to the greater cancer care systems
• Reduce barriers to clinical trial access
• Enhance public and patient knowledge and awareness.
- Brochure
- Our Training Prospectus
- Training Programs: A Chronology
- Where We've Been: An Organizational Resume
Financials