For patients facing cancer, heart disease, neurological conditions and other serious illnesses, clinical trials can offer access to a promising new treatment while helping researchers learn more about how to prevent, diagnose and treat those conditions in the future.
Yet access to those opportunities often depends on where a patient receives care. A national analysis of cancer studies found that an appropriate trial was unavailable at a patient’s institution more than half the time.
The Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials was created to help close that gap, reflecting Advocate Health’s commitment to provide care for all by extending research opportunities beyond traditional academic centers and into the communities it serves.
Building on Decades of Research Experience
Launched in November 2025, the Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials is building a single, coordinated clinical trial network across one of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems. Its goal is ambitious: to make clinical research a standard care option for more patients, whether they receive care at a major academic medical center, a community hospital or a rural clinic.
“Our vision is to make clinical trials part of the care conversation for patients across Advocate Health, not an opportunity determined by where someone happens to live or receive care,” said Adam Samson, president of the Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials. “By connecting our research expertise with the reach of our health system, we can bring more trials closer to patients and give more communities access to investigational treatments.”
Advocate Health brings an unusual combination of scale and expertise to this work: 69 hospitals and more than 1,000 sites of care across eight states, serving nearly 6 million patients annually, along with a clinical research community that includes more than 1,000 experienced investigators. Across the organization, thousands of clinical research studies are underway at any given time, involving tens of thousands of active participants. Building on decades of research experience from Advocate Health Care, Aurora Health Care, Atrium Health and Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Advocate Health is uniquely positioned to connect researchers with broad patient populations and bring clinical trial opportunities to more communities.
Those numbers reflect an established research foundation already operating across Advocate Health. Every day, experienced investigators, research coordinators and clinical teams conduct studies that span cancer, heart and vascular care, neurosciences, orthopedics, pediatrics, primary care, gastroenterology, and other specialties. The National Center for Clinical Trials is building on that foundation by connecting capabilities that have historically operated across individual markets, institutions and research programs, making them easier to access, coordinate and expand to more patients and communities.
For life science partners, the model creates a single point of entry into Advocate Health and a more consistent path to investigators, patients and research sites across multiple states and care settings. It is designed to support multisite clinical trials through one enterprise relationship, simplifying feasibility, study placement, startup and delivery.
The Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials provides the operating model that connects and scales the health system’s research strengths through a more coordinated model. It brings together business development, feasibility, study placement, budgeting and contracting, regulatory support, patient recruitment, trial operations, technology, data and evidence generation, creating a more streamlined way for researchers and life sciences companies to engage with Advocate Health while helping clinicians identify research opportunities as part of everyday care.
A key differentiator is Advocate Health’s ability to support research through a single institutional review board and coordinated data and regulatory infrastructure, including a modern data platform with its integrated electronic health record system. Together, these capabilities support the full study life cycle and are designed to reduce administrative complexity, improve consistency across study startup and delivery, and make it easier to connect appropriate studies with investigators, care teams and patients across Advocate Health. The coordinated model is also intended to reduce the administrative burden on investigators and local research teams, allowing them to focus more of their time on patients, clinical decision-making and high-quality study delivery.
“Advocate Health has extraordinary research expertise across its academic, clinical and community-based programs,” said Ebony Boulware, M.D., chief academic officer of Advocate Health and dean of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. “By connecting that expertise across the enterprise, we can extend the reach of our investigators and create more consistent pathways for research to become part of care in the communities we serve.”
Turning vision into action
In its first year, the Advocate Health National Center for Clinical Trials has moved from organizational launch to enterprise implementation. The center has assembled its leadership team, begun implementing enterprise-wide systems and joined, a national clinical research site alliance expanding access to research and helping clinical trials better reflect the patients affected by the diseases being studied. Through the alliance, participating sites test approaches to patient recruitment and retention, share what they learn and help establish practices that can strengthen the experience of patients and research sites. For Advocate Health, the collaboration creates an opportunity to draw on the reach of its clinical network and develop strategies for connecting more patients with research opportunities in the communities where they receive care.
Early progress suggests that the model is gaining momentum. Advocate Health is on track to start 20% more clinical trials in 2026 than in 2025, creating additional opportunities for patients to consider research as part of their care.
The center is also expanding how Advocate Health works with life sciences partners. It has launched a real-world data and evidence business, secured its first industry engagements and developed new disease registries to generate insights that can inform the development and evaluation of treatments.
Building the team — and the engine — to scale
Leading the work is Samson, who brings vast experience growing and operating clinical research programs at organizations including Walgreens and Duke Clinical Research Institute.
He is supported by leaders whose experience spans the clinical research ecosystem:
- Chris Church, vice president of business development, is expanding relationships with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and research partners.
- Cerdi Beltre, vice president of clinical trial operations, is building the consistent processes, compliance structure and site network needed to deliver high-quality trials at scale.
- Jackie Dougherty, vice president of technology, is developing the data and technology foundation that will connect patients, investigators and trials.
- Selvin Ohene, vice president of clinical trials integration and execution, is helping bring the model into research operations across Advocate Health.
- Leanne Li, vice president of real-world data and evidence, is advancing the use of health data to improve trial design, enrollment and understanding of patient outcomes.
Together, the team draws on experience from health systems, academic research organizations, life sciences companies and clinical research leaders including CVS Health, PPD, Parexel, Innovo Research, Fortrea, Tufts Medical Center and IQVIA.
“We have assembled a team with deep expertise across every aspect of the clinical research ecosystem, from trial operations and patient recruitment to technology, data and evidence generation,” Samson said. “That experience positions us to mobilize the full potential of one of the nation’s largest clinical trial networks, accelerate the delivery of research opportunities across Advocate Health and bring innovative treatments to more patients and communities.”
Bringing more trials to more communities
The long-term measure of success will not be the size of the network alone. It will be whether a patient can learn about and participate in an appropriate clinical trial through the care team they already know, closer to the place they call home — and whether researchers can reach the patients they need more efficiently.
By connecting decades of research expertise with the reach of one of the nation's largest nonprofit health systems, Advocate Health is helping make clinical research a more accessible part of care, creating more opportunities for patients to participate in studies, for clinicians to connect patients with investigational treatments and for promising discoveries to reach more communities.