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Barriers and facilitators to implementing the clinical trial navigator program: A qualitative analysis.

2025· article· en· W4410811666 on OpenAlexaffabout
Salah Alhajsaleh, Anthony Luginaah, Caroline Hamm, Milica Paunic, Dana Morgan Inglis, Renée Nassar, Mahmoud Hossami, Anaam Jaet, Christina Trieu, Laurice Togonon Arayan, Govana Sadik, Roaa Hirmiz, Lee McGrath, Depen Sharma, Michael Touma, Olla Hilal, Megan Delisle

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Clinical Oncology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicHealth and Medical Research Impacts
Canadian institutionsUniversity of TorontoWindsor Regional HospitalUniversity of ManitobaWestern UniversityUniversity of OttawaUniversity of Windsor
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedicineQualitative researchMedical physicsMedical education

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

e23198 Background: The Clinical Trials Navigator (CTN) Program was launched in 2019 to increase enrollment in cancer clinical trials. It is free for all Canadians, and over 550 people have now used the Program. This study assesses the perspectives of people with cancer regarding the implementation of clinical trial navigation in Canada. Methods: People with cancer and their caregivers (n = 21) were recruited from across Canada to participate in a 30-60 minute semi-structured interview. Based on the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) domains, we assessed the benefits, needs, facilitators, and access to clinical trial navigation in Canada. Thematic analyses were performed by two independent researchers in duplicate using inductive and deductive coding. Results: 10 Interviewees had contacted the CTN Program (Pre-CTN) but had not yet received navigation for clinical trials, 10 had never contacted the CTN Program (Non-CTN) and 1 completed the CTN Program (Post-CTN). The participants valued early and direct access to information about clinical trials and perceived the CTN Program as a unique and trustworthy resource because it was free and created by Canadians. CTN 9: “I know you're Canadian. So that matters to me because I'm also Canadian” CTN 5: “Yeah, it's ethical. It's transparent and free. Free is a good thing. Mostly what I'm looking for where I can get a straight answer for a straight question.” The CTN Program provided a sense of relief and control for people with cancer and their caregivers during their cancer journey. CTN 5: “It’s really important for people who are going through this kind of psychological and emotional whirlwind to know that there is that avenue available in Canada Participants valued finding a clinical trial when needed. Post-CTN 1 “Ohhhhh yes, because I'm going to know that I have options when I need them ...Good to know that I have something to fall back on...it certainly made a difference.” There were differences among oncologists in the support of identifying clinical trials, and the CTN Program was perceived as an important solution to reducing this variability. CTN 9 “And my oncologist is very well informed. So I don't know, my experience has been that. [Clinical trials] were mentioned to me. I don't know if everyone has that experience.” CTN 2 “And I've been asking my previous oncologist on how I can get on it, and I wasn't really helped, so I went out because ...my treatment options are limited and or there are none no more.” Conclusions: Our results illustrate the gaps in the Canadian clinical trial ecosystem and emphasize the value of the CTN Program to Canadians with cancer. The CTN Program addresses issues such as the timeliness and legitimacy of clinical trials information, increases patient sense of control and alleviates the burden of unexplored options.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.019
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.032
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.981
Threshold uncertainty score0.282

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0190.032
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.004
Science and technology studies0.0090.006
Scholarly communication0.0040.004
Open science0.0020.004
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.517
GPT teacher head0.739
Teacher spread0.222 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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