How Race Was Defined in the ELEVATUM Study | AAO 2024

Categorizing people by race is a fraught issue in healthcare research because of the social, political and economics dimension of race and racist precedents, such as the Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee.

In the second part of his interview with Managed Healthcare Executive about the ELEVATUM study, Jeremiah Brown, M.D., of Retina Consultants of Texas, discusses racial categories and the data that the Genenetech-funded study will collect. Brown and his co-investigators allowed patients to self-identify as Black, Hispanic or Native American, Brown said.

"The beauty of this study is that is not just looking at vision and retina thickness but also things like socioeconomic status, ZIP codes, education, body-mass index, genetics. This is going to be treasure trove of data," Brown said.

Brown presented results from the ELEVATUM study yesterday at the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting in Chicago that showed the results of Vabysmo (faricimab) among the 124 participants were consistent with those seen in YOSEMITE and RHINE trials of Vabysmo. ELEVATUM was conducted at sites that treat a high proportion of Black and Hispanic patients and eligibility criteria allowed patients with diabetic macular edema to participate who had hemoglobin A1c level up to 12%.