At UCSF Fresno, research is vital to the mission of improving health in Central California, and the willingness of people to participate in clinical trials is crucial to the study of medical conditions specific to the region.
Over the course of a clinical trial, faculty investigators and Clinical Research Center staff spend many hours with study participants, either at in-person visits to the UCSF Fresno research center in downtown Fresno or the occasional house-call visits and follow-up telephone calls. Trust develops, and sometimes, simply the interactions between researchers and study subjects – by themselves – lead to improved health and well-being.
At follow-up encounters, it’s common for research subjects (volunteers) to reveal health problems that are not connected to clinical trials, resulting in their getting medical attention and, in some cases, directing researchers toward a new problem to investigate.
“The more interactions they have with us, the more they trust us,” said Eyad Almasri, MD, assistant dean for research at UCSF Fresno. “Frequently, people will say they have been to a hospital or have a question for me. A lot of the time, the questions are not related to the study or even to my specialty (pulmonary/critical care) They just need someone to be their best advocate.”
Investigators do not take the place of primary care physicians, Dr. Almasri emphasized. “We’re just happy to help here.”
UCSF Fresno, a regional campus of the UCSF School of Medicine, has 47 clinical trials at various stages and several observational studies. The research provides a firsthand look at health care needs in Central California. The trials provide Central California patients with access to cutting-edge therapies for a range of conditions, including stroke, heart failure, diabetes, pneumonia, influenza, Valley fever, pulmonary hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, cancers of the lung, blood, lymphatics, breast, and bladder, among other diseases.
Talking with study subjects can open doors to discoveries of health problems for investigation that were not on researchers’ radar. “Immersing yourself with patients and talking with people will lead to questions if you keep your eyes and ears open and take people seriously – and give them time to express themselves,” Dr. Almasri said.
Researchers have the advantage of spending time with patients, but they also have support from research staff who are bilingual in languages such as Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, and Arabic, among others.
“We’re trying to make our research center representative of the community of whom we are serving,” said Dr. Almasri. “And when people see someone from their background, they tend to trust more. And not only the language, but it’s also being sensitive to the culture and the way of life and understanding their needs.”
Investigators and research staff are part of the community, Dr. Almasri added. “We’re UCSF, but we are local. I live here, my kids go to school here. We go to restaurants and grocery stores here. So, we are local.”
For more information about research at UCSF Fresno, please email: [email protected]
