JACKSONVILLE, Fla — "The heart of all medical advances" is how one doctor who has a new program named after him describes clinical trials.
Doctors say clinical trials don't have enough minority patients, but now work is being done to change that on the First Coast.
Dr. Roxana Dronca didn't know if she would be able to continue as Mayo Clinic's chair of hematology/oncology after her daughter passed away. She did and now works to save others in her daughter's memory.
Dronca is now part of an award program to save other people by looking at health disparities. She sees where the world is failing Black men.
"The death rates in Black men with prostate cancer are actually still more than twice of any other ethnicity," Dronca said.
Her project in the works involves bringing the care to the patient. Dronca has a list of reasons why this would help, but she's also working on the issue in another way. Dronca was just inducted into the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program with the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.
The goal of the program is to mentor hundreds of doctors to get clinical trials to reflect the population. Right now the program reports only four percent of patients in clinical trials are Black.
"I also think that the less optimal outcomes in minority patients is really a reflection of the fact that we're not doing the best job in reaching everybody," Dronca said.
'Reaching everybody' means saving other people's daughters and sons. Dronca lost her seven-year-old daughter Maya last year to an aggressive brain tumor.
"I think I'm probably a much more fierce fighter against cancer right now," Dronca said. "Because I really want to give it my all to see through the day that moms like me do not have to carry this pain, that kids like Maya do not have their life and dreams cut short."
Learn more about diversifying clinical trials here.