African-Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with certain forms of cancer and are far more likely to die of the disease. But, they also are less likely to enroll in cancer clinical trials, with African-Americans accounting for just 2.5 percent of participants nationwide.
Investigators from Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, Tenn., have just completed a multi-year recruitment trial in which 68 percent of those minority patients eligible for a clinical trial agreed to participate. The dramatic increase in enrollment was the result of direct intervention, which included identifying barriers to enrollment and developing programs to eliminate those barriers. The results were reported during the annual American Association for Cancer Research conference in Denver, Colo.
Barriers included missed appointments, lack of transportation, inadequate insurance, miscommunications and lack of patient understanding. Those barriers were identified during the first year of the study and program procedures were adjusted during succeeding years to address them. Investigators developed a model of care that screened every newly diagnosed patient and identified those patients eligible for a clinical trial.
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