Perceptions of Clinical Research Participation among African American Women

Abstract

Background-Recruiting minority women into clinical research remains a significant challenge to conducting ethnically representative research. The main objective of this Office on Women's Health, DHHS-funded e-health database evaluation project was to examine African American women's thoughts and perceptions about the clinical research process and about participation in the University of Michigan Women's Health Registry research database.

African American Women's Perceptions and Attitudes Regarding Participation in Medical Research: The Mayo Clinic/The Links, Incorporated Partnership

“…29,35,36 African American women who are not offered a research opportunity are not likely to become research participants. 23 Less than one-quarter of study respondents had sought out an opportunity to participate in health-related research. This may be consistent with the observation that African American women are more likely to participate in research addressing a personal medical problem, 23 and the fact that many of the participants reported excellent overall health status.…”

“…23 Less than one-quarter of study respondents had sought out an opportunity to participate in health-related research. This may be consistent with the observation that African American women are more likely to participate in research addressing a personal medical problem, 23 and the fact that many of the participants reported excellent overall health status. Altogether, these findings suggest that African American women in particular may be less likely to seek opportunities to participate in research as healthy volunteers.…”

Letter by Mittal and McCormick Regarding Article, “Self-Report of Stroke, Transient Ischemic Attack, or Stroke Symptoms and Risk of Future Stroke in the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study”

“…Previous studies have reported potential barriers of low recruitment in blacks, including perceived bias of research benefiting whites only, research not relevant to blacks, lack of information concerning research, lack of compensation, research that does not address a person or his/her family directly, and limited time for healthcare-related activities. 2 The authors have also not explained why they only focused on white and black population.…”

Menopause, Rurality, And Obesity in Rural African American Women

“…The paucity of non-interventional studies (Palmer et al, 2003) aimed at exploring the relationships among culture, behavior, biology (menopausal transition), and demographic factors among AAW (Smith et al 2007) residing in rural and very rural areas of the U.S. is a gap the proposed research aims to address. Such information is necessary to aid development and delivery of more culturally appropriate healthcare for ethnically diverse women.…”

“…Although more studies are exploring obesity and its relationship to health and PA among AAW (Beydoun et al, 2009;Thompson et al, 2009), most are interventional, conducted in urban settings, and report high attrition rates. In many ethnically diverse studies, samples of rural AAW are noticeably smaller or absent (BeLue, Taylor-Richardson, Lin, Riveria, & Grandison, 2006;Smith et al, 2007).…”