Funding outcome

Researchers have been using high-quality research studies called clinical trials for years to discover better medical treatments for children. This has helped improve the healthcare that children around the world receive. However, children from racial or ethnic minoritized groups and those who are Indigenous, live in rural communities, are transgender, or have English as a second language still receive worse healthcare. Some people have raised concerns that these groups of children are often not included in trials which means we don't know if new treatments are truly effective for them or not. Our study plans to look at recent clinical trials that included Canadian children and describe the diversity of these children. We will describe children in the trials based on a number of important characteristics including age, gender, race and ethnicity, language, location, religion, education, income, and disability. We will also look at trial papers and see if they are reporting these demographics. This study will help us accomplish two goals. The first goal is that we will better understand which children we can use new treatments with. If certain groups of children are not included in these trials, that could mean that new treatments may have safety risks or may not be as effective for these children. The second goal is that we can start to look at why certain groups of children are less likely to be included in trials and identify strategies to improve inclusion. By engaging with these communities and creating solutions together, we can then build better trials that benefit all Canadian children.