Pediatric clinical trials face many barriers. They are too slow, too expensive and are often disconnected with the needs of the children and families they are supposed to help.

The Research Trailblazers – an ICN Learning Lab focused on improving pediatric clinical research – identified issues and barriers associated with participating in research studies and began to test and share strategies and best practices to close gaps related to successful trial enrollment, accelerating the pace of trial start-up, and developing more efficient processes across all phases of a research study.

A major accomplishment of this work is the information, knowledge and know-how collected in their Research Change Package - A Guide to Improving Your Research Journey.

Several teams have been meeting regularly as a part of the ImproveCareNow (ICN) Engagement Campaign, to learn about and test tools and ideas to increase parent and patient engagement at their centers. These were all teams that were struggling to find parent partners who wanted to be involved just one year ago. During their most recent check-in call, the group ended up having a vibrant discussion where they shared successes, big and small, and learned from each other how to continue to increase engagement.