Dezbee McDaniel explains how to leverage Social Media to Make Clinical Research More Inclusive.
- Can you tell our audience about yourself?
I am from rural North Carolina and a graduate of UNC- Chapel Hill. Through my experiences growing up and in college, I learned to be a problem solver in communities I’m a part of. I grew up in a problem driven community that needed solutions from outside the community and never seemed to have what’s needed to solve our own problems from my own perspective. In college, I was able to see how communities come together to solve their own problems. It really made me stronger with my own internal value of communities solving their own problems without relying too heavily on outside stakeholders. This has been the core idea driving my ambition on my journey as an entrepreneur and what I embody.
I am currently Cofounder and CEO of CliniSpan Health, an influencer software platform for underserved groups to access clinical research. Through CliniSpan Health, I am able to directly improve communities that I am a part of. I am able to affect people’s experiences with drugs and create overall better health states.
I had a personal experience with my Aunt Sherri, who was taking post-chemo meds, and she experienced side effects that doctors told her she would not. She began to lose trust in her relationship with doctors and ended up in a worse health state from the prescribed drug. I learned that not enough Black women were present in the trials for many of the drugs to understand their experiences acutely and were astounded by the findings. This experience inspired me to jumpstart CliniSpan Health with my team. Knowing that we have the opportunity to help my aunt directly as well as others in similar situations. Knowing that, as we expand, we will directly impact minority and other underserved communities to avoid issues that she experienced. This is what motivates both myself and my team on our mission for health equity.
CliniSpan Health is making huge progress with our impact on underserved patients. We have been able to educate over 2 million underserved patients on clinical research. Education is a fundamental aspect of starting a clinical trial journey, especially in the communities we serve. We also have given more than 3000 patients in underserved communities access to a fitting study and all in less than three years.
- Can you tell our audience about CliniSpan Health?
CliniSpan Health is an influencer software platform for underserved groups to access clinical research. We call our model the Digital Health Influencer (DHI) model. We have created a digital path to go from social media follower to patient in a clinical trial in a few easy steps.
On the patient side, we are focused on 3 particular underserved groups that can be better served through integration of social media and technology in clinical trials: racial minorities, women, and rural citizens. The specific target population is a racial minority aged 18-35 that lives in or around suburban areas and has some form of interest in health equity.
We work with influencers that come from underserved communities themselves and understand the cultural competencies of their follower communities. Partnering with them gives us two big things that make this model effective: 1) a platform to create and build trust that is normally difficult to establish and 2) the ability to distribute tailored content to audiences with cultural insights from influencers. Our content and digital health influencers connect with these communities in ways that Pharma Sponsors and CRO’s are unable to understand or achieve currently. This model makes followers much more engaged than normal and from here, they can sign up on the CliniSpan platform.
Once on the platform, we tailor the messaging and study suggestions to create a personalized experience for each user. We are able to use particular data points from their user accounts to promote particular studies of interest and make their clinical trial journey seamless.
On the B2B side, this model allows us to serve Pharma Sponsors and CRO companies to build trust in their brand within these communities and improve diversity outcomes. The companies we work with understand the importance of leveraging social media to reach underserved communities. They understand that you must have a grasp of what content and channels will resonate with the underserved audiences they want to reach, but might not have it quite figured out. And that CliniSpan Health helps them to do this effectively.
The goal of our business is firstly to educate. We want to educate as many people as we can in underserved communities because without education, they can never gain a level of comfort that allows them to enroll into a clinical trial. We also focus on the number of people we have created access for, in regards to getting enrolled into clinical trials. Our ultimate goal is to increase the percentage of People of Color in clinical trials to match the percentage of People Of Color in the US.
Some areas of focus for CliniSpan Health are: healthy studies, dermatology, infectious diseases and vaccines, mental health, respiratory, oncology and other areas acutely affecting People of Color.
We are located in Research Triangle Park, in the heart of one of the biotech centers of the United States. We were founded in 2018 and have been on the market since 2021. We are a SEED stage company that is currently fundraising and scaling quickly.
- What problem is ClinicSpan Health solving & how?
The huge problem we solve is that the US is made up of 40% People of Color in the US while as little as 2% up to only 16% are included in clinical research. People in underserved communities often take improper dosage amounts and see side effects that could have been avoided, and have overall worse experiences with drugs based on this reality, like my Aunt Sherri.
This problem has also been further exacerbated for Pharma companies by the FDA increasing regulatory practices around diversity in clinical trials. The FDA is starting to not allow drugs to hit the market if they were not tested equitably enough in all populations. This problem affects the future of drug development heavily. The core of why more minorities are not involved in trials is due to lack of access to and trust in clinical trial information. In today’s digital world, these underserved communities are taking in and dissecting information in ways that feel comfortable for them. Pharma companies are not communicating with them in culturally competent manners. That along with past mistreatment has made it easy for minorities to discount the healthcare system in their lives.
We are using both new approaches and technology to solve this problem. We are the first company to build a technology platform to leverage social media influencers in clinical research with the DHI model.
The biggest benefit to our approach is trust in shared information. Our DHIs build trust because people can see themselves in our influencers. Influencers’ advocacy for clinical research can inspire others to believe in it too. This trust can motivate people to join and promote studies, as they see benefits for themselves. This creates a higher level of trust that makes people from these communities take action. Other models do not leverage high trust digital relationships to connect in a way that ours does.
- What have been the biggest achievements of CliniSpan Health?
I am most proud of having helped create a safer Covid Vaccine. CliniSpan Health helped on the Novavax Covid study in 2021, focusing primarily on African American recruitment. Novavax released their data and reached a 12% inclusion rate for African Americans, when the average is around 3%. Our model helped generate a 4x more inclusive COVID Vaccine trial and proceed to help this vaccine go on to receive FDA approval in early 2022 even under the new regulations. Ultimately, CliniSpan Health helped underserved communities have a more effective vaccine for their community during one of the most important times of our lives, and we are also helping Pharma companies be more inclusive in the marketplace.
We’ve raised $250k total in funding. We are currently raising a seed round of $750k- $1M. Our 2022 revenue and user growth rates are 350% and 150% respectively. We more than doubled our team in 2022 from 3 people to 7.
- What have been the biggest challenges for CliniSpan Health & how did you overcome them?
Prior to COVID I was frustrated by the sheer lack of knowledge of people in underserved communities as it pertains to the drug development process. This frustrated me because I wondered what kind of disservice our healthcare system has done to these communities that they do not understand the intimate effects it has on a daily basis.
Another challenge was building a model that actually led to inclusion from underserved communities. We started by connecting with non profits such as churches within these communities to begin the process. These groups often made information distribution a bit difficult because of lack of digital infrastructure, which made it hard to operate this model. As we rolled out our Digital Health Influencer model, it has worked pretty effectively since its formation. After trying different community relationships, we concluded that digital relations are the best option for efficiency and effectiveness.
Nonprofit networks did not work for us because the way we engaged these groups did not allow us to easily manage the distribution of information. CliniSpan Health was not able to create direct engagement with our target audience and track the engagement at the same time. We found success in the DHI model because it marries our brand with the trusted brand of the influencer and allows us to jointly engage our target audience to distribute highly trusted information.
The audience can assist us by:
- 1. Reaching out with thought leadership opportunities to bring more awareness to this problem in the industry.
- 2. Sharing CliniSpan Health with any clinical trial operators that you know need more diversity in their trials.
- 3. Introducing us to speaking/presenting opportunities to share more about our effective approach.
- 4. Introducing us to other healthcare leaders and clinical trial operations teams for knowledge sharing.
- What are you most excited about in healthcare at present? How do you anticipate healthcare will change in the next 5 years?
- Technology: What up and coming technologies are you excited about? Why?
- How social media can be leveraged in clinical research, particularly influencers. The potential for social media in clinical research is barely being investigated on its surface. In 5 years, I think it will be a normal experience for a social media follower to become a clinical trial participant with one button.
- Wellbeing: How will it change the diseases, their management or how clinicians practice?
- Initially it will be harder for clinicians since they will need to gain social media knowledge from a business standpoint in order to operate. (short term). Once the learning curve subsides, it will make trials easier to operate and more effective. Based on findings from a study by CliniSpan Health and CSL, social media is the #1 tool educating people in underserved communities on clinical research across three generations (Gen X, Millennial, Gen Z). So, we know this makes the patient experience smoother and more convenient, which is a great thing for the industry.
- Audience: What can people do to make the best of this opportunity and be a part of the future solution?
- Distributing relevant knowledge and information to generally educate more people about the inequities in clinical research. It is important to be really strategic in how you do this.
- They can also add CliniSpan Health to their list of companies to support and support us in any way they see fit.
Contact Details
- Business website: clinispanhealth.com
- Business address: 68 TW Alexander Dr, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
- Business phone and email: 336-552-3839; dezbee@clinispanhealth.com
- Business Social Media links: @clinispanhealth (TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all platforms)
- Personal Social Media Links: @dezmacc (instagram), Dezbee McDaniel
