Impact of Demographics and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Variables on Clinical Trial Participation in Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

Prior studies have demonstrated that certain populations including older patients, racial/ethnic minority groups, and women are underrepresented in clinical trials. We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) seen at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) to investigate the association between trial participation, race/ethnicity, travel distance and neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES). Using patient addresses, we ascertained nSES variables on educational attainment, income, poverty, racial composition and housing at the census tract (CT) level. We also performed geospatial analysis to determine the geographic distribution of clinical trial participants and distance from patient residence to MDACC. We examined 3146 consecutive adult patients with NHL seen between January 2017 and December 2020. The study cohort was predominantly male and non-Hispanic white (NHW). The most common insurance types were private insurance and Medicare; only 1.1% of patients had Medicaid. There was a high overall participation rate of 30.5% with 20.9% enrolled in therapeutic trials. In univariate analyses, lower participation rates were associated with lower nSES including higher poverty rates and living in crowded households. Racial composition of CT was not associated with differences in trial participation. In multivariable analysis, trial participation varied significantly by histology and participation declined nonlinearly with age in the overall, follicular lymphoma and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) models. In the DLBCL subset, Hispanic patients had lower odds of participation than Whites (odds ratio 0.36 [95% confidence interval 0.21 - 0.62 p=0.001). In our large academic cohort, race, gender, insurance type, and nSES were not associated with trial participation, whereas age and diagnosis were.