Creating a clinical trials community by moving from human subjects to patient partners: 3 questions every trialist should ask

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an area of public health impacting the livelihoods, safety, and health of each and every one of us. As everyday Americans volunteered to be first to receive placebo or novel therapeutics in the quest to end a global outbreak, suddenly we as a community were also informed of clinical trials, vaccine safety and development, and research design. As engagement spreads and the opportunity becomes ripe to build a community of researchers, patients, and clinicians and transform what has historically been termed “human subjects” in clinical research, we encourage this drive to strengthen the clinical research ecosystem with a primary focus on patient involvement in all phases of codeveloping clinical research design.