Head of Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement

ROLE SUMMARY:

Pfizer Research & Development is responsible for the clinical development and advancement of Pfizer’s pipeline of innovative medicines and vaccines. These breakthroughs would not be possible without the tens of thousands of volunteers who participate in our clinical trials each year. Pfizer is committed to reducing health disparities and we aim to lead the industry by having the most patient centric clinical trials, building on our trusted relationships with our partners, including patient advocacy organizations.

The Head of Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement is responsible for ensuring that our clinical study populations and our resulting regulatory dossiers fully represent the racial, ethnic, gender and age diversity of the countries where we conduct our clinical trials, and the epidemiology of the diseases we intend to treat or prevent.  This leader is responsible for ensuring appropriate engagement of patients and patient advocacy groups to gain insights into individual disease burden to inform trial design, influence recruitment plans for clinical trials, provide education and raise awareness about Pfizer clinical trials.  This role is a member of the Optimization, Analytics & Recruitment Solutions (OARS) Leadership Team and leads the Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement Team. 

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Provides strategic leadership of the Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement function at Pfizer, designing strategy, roadmap and associated initiatives, processes and partnerships required to execute the strategy

• Acts as a change agent influencing both internal and external culture through designing and delivering training and socialization of ways of working to strengthen our understanding of disease disparities and develop working practices to incorporate this into clinical trial design and participation

• Is the single point of contact for global stakeholders on initiatives related to Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement

• Contribute to Pfizer-wide Patient Advocacy & Engagement workstreams and initiatives, and work with internal stakeholders to ensure the development of cross-Pfizer processes to build consistency of approach towards relationship management

• Is the Pfizer business process owner for Diversity Action Plans, a new process required by FDA on all Phase 3 and pivotal trials to improve representation in clinical trial participants. 

• Is responsible for leading a team delivering frameworks, process and procedures required to ensure patient insights are gathered and applied to the design considerations and execution of clinical trials

• Partnering with Global Medical Epidemiology to steward Pfizer’s Diversity Goal Setting Framework, ensuring all potential new trials are assessed under this framework, have appropriate representation goals established, and ensures study teams are executing against these expectations. 

• Responsible for continuing to evolve the Diversity Goal Setting Framework as appropriate to reflect considerations of countries outside the US

• Represents Pfizer externally as the single point of contact on Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement topics, represents Pfizer in cross industry collaboration work (e.g. PhRMA, TransCelerate, CISCRP, SCRS), and drives the collaboration with the FDA’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity.

• Provides strategic leadership of the Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement function at Pfizer, designing roadmap and associated initiatives and partnerships to achieve this.

• Partners within OARS Leadership across Recruitment Strategy, Feasibility Strategy, Site Experience & Partnerships, Participant Experience & Ecosystem and Analytics to ensure that patient engagement and diversity is built into overarching strategies and that impact can be measured

• As leader of the Clinical Trial Diversity & Patient Engagement Team, hires, trains and manages a high-performing team.  Has a keen eye on growth and development of colleagues to achieve optimal retention, coaching, career development and performance management

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelors degree and 15+ years of experience with strong mastery of clinical development operations

• An in-depth knowledge and prior experience in Diversity and Inclusion for clinical trials or health equity experience is required

• Exceptional leadership qualities - influencing and motivating teams to deliver against ambitious business goals

• Proven track-record of building deep relationships and experience in engaging institutional leaders in strategic partnerships and initiatives

• Customer and patient fi