Prestayko Nicholas, Ossorio Pilar N, Fisher Abbey, Menon Nikhil, Downs Danielle Symons, Yerby Lea G, Zgierska Aleksandra E
Family and Community Medicine, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, USA.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, USA.
J Clin Transl Sci. 2025 May 26;9(1):e128. doi: 10.1017/cts.2025.10052. eCollection 2025.
Lack of reliable, affordable transportation is a common barrier to clinical research participation, potentially contributing to health disparities. Insufficient and/or nonexistent institutional policies on research-related transportation make it challenging for research teams to effectively overcome transportation barriers and promote research participation among people from disadvantaged backgrounds. This study's goal was to review research-related transportation policies across clinical research-involved institutions and propose recommendations for what such policies should address to help promote research engagement among diverse, representative populations.
We surveyed 28 recruitment sites, members of the National Institutes of Health-funded Healthy Brain and Child Development Consortium, poised to recruit over 7000 families, and completed an online search for each site's policies relevant to research-related transportation (i.e., transportation of participants or research staff travel to/from research activities). We identified, reviewed, and thematically described content of the relevant policies and developed summary recommendations for institutional guidance components.
We identified seven policies (from five sites) on research-related transportation; four provided guidance on research-related transportation services; two on reimbursement; and one on when research staff transports participants. The online search identified publicly available business travel policies for 22 sites. No policy addressed research staff travel specifically for "study business" or research personnel transporting children for research purposes.
Few institutions involved in clinical research have policies guiding research-related transportation. Such policies, if adopted, could help support research-related transportation and, thus, participation of individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, increasing generalizability of research results and contributing toward reducing social and health disparities.
缺乏可靠且负担得起的交通方式是参与临床研究的常见障碍，这可能会加剧健康差距。机构关于研究相关交通的政策不足和/或缺失，使得研究团队难以有效克服交通障碍，并促进弱势群体参与研究。本研究的目的是审查参与临床研究的各机构的研究相关交通政策，并就此类政策应涵盖的内容提出建议，以帮助促进不同代表性人群的研究参与度。
我们调查了28个招募点，这些招募点均为美国国立卫生研究院资助的健康大脑与儿童发展联盟的成员，预计将招募7000多个家庭，并对每个招募点与研究相关交通（即参与者的交通或研究人员往返研究活动的交通）相关的政策进行了在线搜索。我们确定、审查并按主题描述了相关政策的内容，并为机构指导部分制定了总结建议。
我们确定了7项（来自5个招募点）关于研究相关交通的政策；4项提供了关于研究相关交通服务的指导；2项关于报销；1项关于研究人员何时运送参与者。在线搜索确定了22个招募点公开可用的商务旅行政策。没有政策专门涉及研究人员因“研究业务”而进行的旅行或研究人员为研究目的运送儿童的情况。
很少有参与临床研究的机构制定指导研究相关交通的政策。如果采用此类政策，有助于支持与研究相关的交通，从而促进弱势群体的参与，提高研究结果的普遍性，并有助于减少社会和健康差距。
