The STARR Report: October 2020
Join us for our next Zoom Conversation:
Recruitment: Leveraging COVID
Trials & Awareness
October 22nd at 3PM ET / NOON PT
The STARR Coalition is hosting an interactive conversation via Zoom for sites to share and discuss Recruitment. We would love for you to join us – please let us know if you are interested in participating so we can be sure to send you the calendar invite. Register HERE!
Are you STARR Certified?
We recognize that mental health clinical research is a particularly challenging area within research so we’ve brought together stakeholders from pharma, CRO’s, and sites to identify some obstacles and challenges unique to CNS research.

The STARR Site Certification is a result of these conversations.

The main reason to be STARR Certified is to be part of a network of stakeholders that are employing standardized best practices within their organizations and are advancing mental health clinical research by:

  • cultivating community engagement;
  • promoting research as an option for all;
  • strengthening communication between research site staff and patients, caregivers, and advocacy groups;
  • sharing their expertise with fellow sites within the STARR community.

Everything The STARR Coalition does comes from our stakeholders looking to make positive change. 
The STARR Coalition welcomes The Quell Foundation into our community!
The Quell Foundation strives to reduce the number of suicides, overdoses and the incarceration of people with mental health illness.

We work to accomplish this by encouraging people to share their stories, increasing access to mental health services, providing a pipeline of future mental health care professionals with scholarships, and training first responders to recognize mental health crisis warning signs amongst their own.

Since June 2016, The Quell Foundation has awarded over 1 million dollars to students attending colleges and universities in 40 states. The scholarship programs were established as a means to (1) improve the care and treatment of people with mental health illness, (2) educate communities and individuals about the disparities in care of vulnerable and stigmatized populations with a mental health illness, as well as effective treatment protocols, and (3) to support individuals pursuing degrees in psychology, social work, or other field of study related to the provision of mental health services, thereby increasing the talent pipeline of students entering mental healthcare professions, expanding the delivery of needed mental health care services, and promoting reformation to extend the scope of clinical, behavioral health professional services.

The Quell documentary, 'Lift the Mask', portrays a diverse group of people living with mental illness. Through vivid storytelling, the documentary provides a platform for the subjects and their caregivers to relate their experiences. Detailed interviews and examinations of their lives capture the struggles, as well as the joys and triumphs of those affected by mental health issues. Lift the Mask has screened on campuses and in workplaces across the country, inspiring hope through stories of courage.

For more information and to get involved with this phenomenal organization, visit their website at https://thequellfoundation.org.

We are excited to welcome The Quell Foundation into The STARR community!
STARR Diversity Workgroup
The pandemic has exposed inequities that exist in our country. We've seen disproportionate impact on minority communities and yet, many ongoing trials have still failed to sufficiently enroll a representative patient population. Add to that, the impact of AI and Machine learning as the industry embarks on leveraging data from EMR/EHR to enroll and engage patients and decision support tools for treatment, it's important the machines don't end up reinforcing human biases and perpetuating the barriers to crucial clinical trials and treatments that minorities face. It is with this backdrop that we seek to launch The Starr Coalition Diversity Workgroup. 
 
Our mission is to:
  • assess community needs/strengths/weaknesses around cultural inclusion in research;
  • expand and redefine cultural competency and provide a broad range of educational modalities;
  • find novel ways to reach into underserved areas of our communities with research education;
  • identify cultural/ethnic/socio-economic barriers to research participation
  • ensure that sites are reflective of the communities they serve;
  • build pathways for more diversity in research leadership;
  • understand how diversity impacts scientific advancements in CNS research and expands the application of innovative treatments like precision medicine.
 
Each of these topics alone seems daunting, but we can identify a few of these (or others determined by you) to begin to find solutions for change. We look forward to working with the broader membership to bring this much needed progress to give all patients access to the latest therapies and equitable treatment.
We are delighted to introduce Temitope Keyes as the Diversity Workgroup Chair. Temitope brings 21 years of clinical R&D experience, which she began on the sponsor side, with the majority of that primarily in the eClinical solutions space. She has a passion for technology and its ability to advance important research and successful trial execution. She has had outsourcing roles at Astra-Zeneca and Sanofi, followed by almost 15 years in business development with the likes of ERT, Synteract, Datatrak, and Axiom Real-Time Metrics. Currently, she serves as Vice President at Adaptive Clinical Systems focused on solutions for clinical data integrations and interoperability.
Help The STARR Support Clinical Research...

One of the guiding principles of the STARR Site Certification program is to help build strong, trusting relationships between clinical research sites and the various advocacy and special-service organizations throughout their communities.

We all know that successful community engagement will raise a site’s profile within the community, while educating the public on the benefits of clinical research. Sites that are engaging with the community and building trusting relationships within local advocacy branches are likely to have better relationships with the patients, higher staff morale and job satisfaction, lower staff turn-over, and overall more successful trials.

What can The STARR provide and/or create that will help build those relationships with local advocacy?

Let us know which of the following you think would be the most effective in this effort:

  1. A fact sheet or infographic with data on number of patients treated in clinical research facilities;
  2. A short video that introduces what a clinical trial is;
  3. A graphic on what the different treatment routes look like - for example, if a person with schizophrenia needs help, they can either go to a hospital (what does that look like), go to an urgent care or community clinic (what does that look like), not get treated at all (what does that look like), OR they can go to a research site and be treated with respect and understanding and get a comprehensive evaluation with no strings attached.
  4. Visual on what a clinical trial is and who it helps (those currently living with the disease/condition AND all others now and in the future who have that disease/condition).
  5. Tip sheet for engaging with advocacy.

If you have another idea for something that we could create that would provide a compelling reason for advocacy organizations to team up with research sites, let us know!
Featured STARR Coalition Podcast
In this podcast, Dr. Elan Cohen, Principal Investigator and Lead Psychometric Rater, Hassman Research Institute talks about what a clinical trial is and what makes a good clinical trial participant, as well as the reasons to participate in clinical research trials including: to get access to experts in specific conditions; to learn about your condition; for access to free care before, during, and even after the trial; and ultimately, the main reason: to help others with this condition and help find new treatments.
The STARR Coalition is partnering with thought-leaders across the industry and advocacy to create a National Call-to-Action to promote Mental Health Research. We are working on creating a campaign consisting of actionable items anyone can use to help bring mental health research into the same light as cancer, diabetes or heart disease. We need everyone's help promoting this National Call to Action! If you are interested in joining the workgroup, please call, text, or email us! 
Visit us on the web at www.thestarr.org. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, connect with us on LinkedIn. Be active, make change!
The STARR Coalition | phone: 501.944.8653 | fax: 501.224.1340 | www.thestarr.org