At the latest meeting of the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP)-led Partners Advancing the Clinical Research Workforce (PACRW) consortium, the focus for these extraordinary times in human subjects research was on what levers need to be pulled by the consortium’s members to “bend the curve” toward a better future for stakeholders in what is often an under-recognized and under-resourced segment of the larger healthcare workforce.
In her remarks at the meeting on Thursday (April 24)—held in conjunction with ACRP 2025 in New Orleans—ACRP Executive Director Susan Landis noted that none of the recent technological advancements now making clinical research more efficient for study sites and more effective for patients would have come into play if not for the members of the workforce who actively took hold of that technology and made it work.
“We need to take the insights” gathered from this workforce in a recent survey and “figure out how [they] can take them the last mile” to delivering the benefits of these advancements to the patients who volunteer for clinical trials, Landis said.
Study data quality was the number one thing most respondents to the survey said had improved over the past five to 10 years, added Paul Ivsin, Executive Vice President, Trial Engagement Service, at Continuum Clinical. However, it’s not necessarily an area they expect will see even greater improvements in the near future, he said, and they had generally dour opinions regarding the quality of staffing and training for clinical research.
In this light, some of the PACRW member initiatives discussed at the meeting for training the current workforce and attracting new talent to it, as well as for standardizing more of the elements that make for high-quality research practices, included:
- A pilot program for study coordinator apprenticeships leading to jobs at Duke University being filled by students from Durham Technical Community College (DTCC), as described by Stephanie Freel, PhD, PMP, Director of Clinical Research Operations, Education & Outreach, at Duke, and Sharleen Traynor, PhD, MPH, Director of the Clinical Trials Research Associate Program at DTCC.
- A study that will investigate how ACRP Certified Professional (ACRP-CP®) certification exam results differ between specific takers of the exam who have been identified as recent graduates of clinical research education programs and others who have achieved that certification in general. The project involves organizational members of the Consortium of Academic Programs in Clinical Research, represented by Jared Kerr, Clinical Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, Clinical Research Program, University of North Carolina Wilmington, with oversight by Jessica Fritter, DHSc, MACPR, ACRP-CP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Practice at The Ohio State University College of Nursing.
- The “Join the Team” community outreach effort at University of California, Davis, which seeks to attract students from the rural area’s community colleges into clinical research coordinator positions at the institution, as explained by Olga Kishchenko, CCRP, Education Program Manager for UC Davis Health.
- The “Building Clinical Trial Research Capacity at Community Cancer Centers” collaboration between ACRP, the Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC), and Genentech, summarized by Kimberly Demirhan, MBA, BSN, RN, Assistant Director for Education Programs at ACCC; Mona Gilliam, MSN, APRN-BC, CNS, Director Medical Strategy: Congress, Alliances, Societies, at Genentech; and Marian Valia, Head of Learning & Development for ACRP.
- An ACRP Workforce Data Survey, which is now seeing its Phase I focus group results being leveraged for Phase II development to better understand what information—out of all the seldom-examined aspects of what makes the clinical research workforce tick—will be most valuable for employers to have solid data on. This was outlined by Clese Erikson, Deputy Director of the Health Workforce Research Center at George Washington University.
“In our vision for the future of the clinical research professional workforce, there will be increased awareness of clinical research as a distinct profession at high schools and colleges, with pipelines to training programs, internships, and apprenticeships,” Landis said. “We also see globally recognized entry-level competencies, harmonized across employers; a universal commitment to skills-based training; explicit career pathways that clearly articulate the training and experience required to advance; active efforts to recruit candidates that reflect the communities they serve; and recognition of the value of clinical research professionals as part of interprofessional teams.”
Reported by Gary Cramer
