Equity in Access Research Grants
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Equity in Access Research Program was created to help ensure more equitable access to care for blood cancer patients and survivors.
Applications are now open for the Equity in Access Research Program!
Letters of Intent are due by September 11, 2025 at 3pm ET
Through this program, LLS aims to generate new evidence that can guide policy reform and changes in healthcare practice, in order to mitigate the impact of social, economic and environmental disadvantages and reduce barriers to care. Learn about our 2025 Equity in Access Research Program grantees and their research following this year’s application information.
Click Here to See Our Active Equity in Access PortfolioLLS invites Letters of Intent for the Equity in Access Research Program under the Request for Proposals:
Informed by a scoping review of the literature, the purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to fund research studies that will increase our understanding of effective interventions for increasing accrual to therapeutic cancer clinical trials, particularly among underrepresented populations. Specifically, we seek proposals that will implement and evaluate interventions designed to a) mitigate multilevel barriers to therapeutic clinical trial accrual for underrepresented groups and b) quantitatively measure the impact of these interventions on patient accrual. We are particularly interested in proposals that address systemic, institutional, and clinician-related barriers that impede clinical trial participation.
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See below for Key Dates, as well links to the Request for Proposals, Application Guidelines, and Application Templates.
Key Dates and Deadlines:
| Webinar for prospective applicants | June 18, 2025 (12PM ET) | |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline to submit Letters of Intent | September 11, 2025 (3PM ET) | |
| LLS notifies applicants whether they are invited to submit full proposal | October 31, 2025 | |
| Deadline for receipt of full proposals (invited applicants) | January 29, 2026 (3PM ET) | |
| Notification of awards | April/May 2026 | |
| Grant start date | July 1, 2026 | |
For questions about this RFP and the application process, please contact researchprograms@lls.org.
Click below to access our detailed RFP and Letter of Intent (LOI) instructions:
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS/LETTER OF INTENTFor applicants invited to submit a full proposal, click below for guidelines and instructions to ensure your submission meets all of our requirements:
FULL APPLICATION GUIDELINES AND INSTRUCTIONSClick below for downloadable templates for submission of invited full proposals:
APPLICATION TEMPLATESMEET THE 2025 EQUITY IN ACCESS RESEARCH PROGRAM GRANTEES
LLS recently awarded nearly $5M in funding for five-year research grants under the Request for Proposals "Building Evidence for Effective Interventions to Increase Therapeutic Cancer Clinical Trial Accrual: Promoting Access for Patients from Underrepresented Groups."
Daphne Friedman, MD
Principal Investigator
Hematologist-Oncologist, Durham VA Health Care System; Professor, Duke University School of Medicine
Leah Zullig, PhD, MPH
Co-Principal Investigator
Professor, Population Health Sciences, Duke University
REACH: Researching & Enhancing Access to Clinical trials in Veterans with Hematologic cancers
Cancer clinical trials (CTs) provide high-quality care and are important for advancing treatment options, yet less than 10% of cancer patients participate. The Veterans Administration (VA) diagnoses approximately 50,000 cases of invasive cancer each year. Veterans are more likely to have comorbidities and live in rural areas, which are two known barriers to CT enrollment. A limited number of VA facilities offer cancer CTs, and the cancer CTs that are offered are most often focused on common cancers such as lung and prostate cancer. These barriers limit the ability to enroll Veterans in cancer CTs, especially Veterans with rare cancers such as blood cancers. This study aims to increase the number of therapeutic clinical trials for Veterans with blood cancers in the VA and to increase enrollment of Veterans on these trials across 12 participating VA facilities by expanding the clinical trial portfolio, providing clinical trial navigation, and implementation of a patient matching dashboard that helps research coordinators identify and assess trial eligibility.
Aims:
Aim 1: Expand the hematologic malignancy (HM) CT portfolio by adding CTs across the VA enterprise, supported by a remote research team.
Aim 2: Provide CT navigation and patient matching, connecting Veterans with HMs, VA oncologists, and HM CT research teams.
Aim 3: Conduct a multiple methods evaluation to assess the implementation, effectiveness, and impact of the HM CT expansion and navigation programs.
Study Design: A remote research team will support the activation and conduct of six NCI cooperative group-sponsored HM CTs at VA facilities, with future portfolio expansion as capable. Two decentralized HM CTs will add to the six traditional CTs. CT navigation will provide education and assistance to Veterans and their oncologists seeking assistance with identification and referral to CTs. Patient-matching, a health records and informatics-based approach, will assist CT research teams in identifying and pre-screening prospective participants. Quantitative methods will track metrics such as activated CTs, enrollment rates (overall and rural), and time to activation, while qualitative methods will include interviews with Veterans, oncologists, and research staff to identify barriers, facilitators, and satisfaction. This evaluation will inform program refinement and guide future expansion across the VA enterprise.
Significance: This study has the potential to generate new evidence that could be implemented across both VA and non-VA facilities to address the barrier of insufficient CTs for Veterans with HM, as well as the challenges of identifying and enrolling Veterans on available CTs.
Andrew Hantel, MD
Principal Investigator
Medical Oncologist, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Christopher Lathan, MD, MPH
Co-Principal Investigator
Chief Clinical and Access Equity Officer and Associate Chief Medical Officer; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Richard Stone, MD
Co-Principal Investigator
Lunder Family Chair in Leukemia and Chief of Staff; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
The Collaboration and Infrastructure Program for Diversifying Blood Cancer Clinical Trials
Individuals minoritized by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are underrepresented in blood cancer clinical trials. Research and federal guidance have identified barriers to equitable site access and trial infrastructure as central obstacles to sustained participation equity. This study will test the independent and combined effectiveness of two initiatives aimed at improving enrollment of minoritized patients. The first (Collaboration Initiative) aims to reduce site-access barriers through academic-community physician collaboration and patient navigation. The second (Infrastructure Initiative) aims to lower trial design-related barriers through equity-focused alterations to the trial development infrastructure. The combined LLS Collaboration and Infrastructure Program (LLS CIP) will also be evaluated.
Aims:
Aim 1: Evaluate the effectiveness of the Collaboration Initiative on minoritized patient trial accrual.
Aim 2: Evaluate the effectiveness of the Infrastructure Initiative on minoritized patient trial accrual.
Aim 3: Evaluate the effectiveness of LLS CIP on minoritized patient trial accrual.
Study Design: LLS CIP is a hybrid type 1 effectiveness-implementation trial across Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) Longwood (central campus) and eight local sites. It employs a factorial design, with the Collaboration Initiative being tested against the standard of care across the local sites and the Infrastructure Initiative being tested at DFCI Longwood in a pre-post design. The Collaboration Initiative consists of two components: physician connectors and patient navigators. This DFCI Longwood-based personnel will work with referring personnel at the four sites randomized to the intervention to increase patient identification and referral using structured interactions and a shared trial listing platform. The Infrastructure Initiative also consists of two components: trial development enhancements and personnel engagement, aimed at increasing referral, eligibility, and enrollment. Development enhancements include equity-focused revisions of trial templates, institutional review board (IRB) and clinical trials office (CTO) review and negotiation toolkits, as well as support for participant financial needs. Personnel engagement includes trial equity training, longitudinal programming, and feedback for IRB and CTO staff, along with research nurses and physicians.
Significance: This study has the potential to generate evidence that advances effective and replicable strategies to increase trial enrollment for minoritized individuals with blood cancer by assessing promising but unconfirmed mechanisms for advancing trial enrollment equity, characterizing best practices for physician collaboration, patient navigation, trial design, and equity-focused infrastructure, and bridging the gap between rigorous science and the operational reality of clinical trials.
Support for this program provided by:
