Addressing the elephant and winning the war: Day Two highlights from the 2025 Patient Centricity & Collaboration World Congress
- Olivia Kersey
- Mar 4, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 19, 2025
Keynote panel: increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical trials
After a smashing start on Day One, the second day of this important conference started with a fantastic keynote panel featuring Dr Sondra Butterworth (RareQoL and EDIRA), Naomi Litchfield (Bionical Emas), Claire Bale and Nikul Bakshi (Parkinson’s UK), Amy Yarker (NIHR), and Ify Osunkwo (Novo Nordisk).
One key topic was the importance of addressing historical reasons for mistrust in research:
“As an industry, we absolutely need to do a better job at addressing the elephant in the room. People don’t trust us because we don’t communicate.”
“We’re not dealing with what has gone wrong in trials. We’re not being transparent. We need to say it was wrong, and this is what we’re doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
We [research professionals] have been part of the problem; now it’s time to be part of the solution.”
Sondra then shared a great example of identifying meaningful trial endpoints for African/Caribbean communities:
