A clinical trial can look perfect on paper and still fail once real people actually have to participate. And sometimes entire communities barely make it into the research at all.

Brandon Andres Green, host of Good Neighbor Podcast Tulsa, sits down with Kelsey Powell of PARTNER BioResearch, a Tulsa-based company focused on bringing real-world barriers into clinical trial planning before protocols are finalized.

Kelsey has about eight years of operational experience in clinical research and previously served as a research director in Tulsa.

But the issue became personal too.

Her daughter Addison became seriously ill with Addison’s disease, and Kelsey says the family spent nearly two years trying to understand what was happening. During that time, she later learned there had been a clinical trial roughly two hours away that they never knew existed.

That experience made her start asking a much bigger question:

Why do patients who could potentially benefit from research so often never hear about it?

Kelsey also talks about Native American representation in clinical research and the long-term damage created when trust is broken.

She discusses the Havasupai case, where biological samples originally collected for diabetes research were later used for additional research purposes that tribal members said they had not consented to.

For Kelsey, that history matters because mistrust doesn’t disappear when a study ends.

It can affect whether communities participate in future research at all.

She also raises concerns about what happens when medications are used broadly across populations that may have been underrepresented in the underlying research. Throughout the interview, Kelsey argues that representation is not simply a fairness issue. It can affect how confidently researchers understand safety, effectiveness, and real-world use.

Then we get into the work PARTNER BioResearch is building.

Kelsey describes what she calls pre-protocol clinical trial intelligence, where researchers examine factors like transportation, patient burden, disease prevalence, workforce capacity, site readiness, and community access before locking the study design into place.

She also explains technology her team is developing to dramatically reduce the time required to draft certain clinical research protocols.

The bigger idea is simple:

If researchers wait until recruitment starts to discover that patients can’t realistically participate, the problem was probably built into the trial much earlier.

The conversation also expands into Indigenous health sovereignty, research ethics, trust, and why awareness alone isn’t enough if communities remain disconnected from the systems making decisions about their health.

Kelsey encourages listeners to research these issues for themselves and says LinkedIn is the best place to follow her work and connect.

Connect with Kelsey Powell on LinkedIn:
Search “Kelsey Powell” and PARTNER BioResearch

Good Neighbor Podcast Tulsa:
https://gnptulsa.com/