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A pilot study of a culturally-appropriate, educational intervention to increase participation in cancer clinical trials among African Americans and Latinos

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Abstract

Aim

Culturally-appropriate, educational programs are recommended to improve cancer clinical trial participation among African Americans and Latinos. This study investigated the effect of a culturally-appropriate, educational program on knowledge, trust in medical researchers, and intent for clinical trial participation among African Americans and Latinos in Middle Tennessee.

Method

Trained community health educators delivered a 30-min presentation with video testimonials to 198 participants in 13 town halls. A pre-post survey design was used to evaluate the intervention among 102 participants who completed both pre- and post-surveys one to two weeks after the session.

Results

Paired-sample t-test showed significant increases in unadjusted mean scores for knowledge (p < 0.001), trust in medical researchers (p < 0.001), and willingness to participate in clinical trials (p = 0.003) after the town halls in the overall sample. After adjusting for gender and education, all three outcomes remained significant for the overall sample (knowledge: p < 0.001; trust in medical researchers: p < 0.001; willingness: p = 0.001) and for African Americans (knowledge: p < 0.001; trust in medical researchers: p = 0.007; willingness: p = 0.005). However, willingness to participate was no longer significant for Latinos (knowledge: p < 0.001; trust in medical researchers: p = 0.034; willingness: p = 0.084).

Conclusions

The culturally-appropriate, educational program showed promising results for short-term, clinical trial outcomes. Further studies should examine efficacy to improve research participation outcomes.

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Data availability

The data are not publicly available due to the inclusion of information that could compromise research participant privacy/consent.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the partner community-based organizations in the greater Nashville, Tennessee, area who collaborated with us to identify interested community members to participate in this study.

Funding

This work was supported in part by Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant Numbers P30 CA068485, P30 CA068485-23S5, U54 CA163072, U54 CA163069, U54 CA163066, UL1 RR024975 and UL1 TR000445.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Meharry Medical College, 1005 Dr. D. B. Todd Jr. Blvd., Nashville, TN, 37208, USA

    Jennifer Cunningham-Erves & Consuelo H. Wilkins

  2. Department of Health Policy and Community Health, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA

    Tilicia L. Mayo-Gamble

  3. Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA

    Pamela C. Hull & Caree R. McAfee

  4. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, TN, USA

    Pamela C. Hull & Claudia Barajas

  5. School of Graduate Studies, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN, USA

    Tao Lu & Juan R. Canedo

  6. Department of Family and Community Medicine, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN, USA

    Maureen Sanderson

  7. Progreso Community Center, Nashville, TN, USA

    Juan R. Canedo

  8. Matthew Walker Community Health Center, Nashville, TN, USA

    Katina Beard

  9. Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, Nashville, TN, USA

    Consuelo H. Wilkins

  10. Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Office of Health Equity, Nashville, TN, USA

    Consuelo H. Wilkins

Authors
  1. Jennifer Cunningham-Erves
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Contributions

CHW, MS, PCH, KB, and JCE participated in the conception and design of the study. CHW was responsible for obtaining ethics approval and acquiring funding, and JCE maintained ethics approval. JCE and CHW managed the study. All authors contributed to pilot study development. JCE and CB recruited and screened eligible patients and collected data. JCE, TMG, and CB were managed the data. JCE, TMG, and TL conducted data analysis, and TL, JCE, TMG, PCH and MS interpreted results. JCE drafted the manuscript. All authors revised the manuscript and have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jennifer Cunningham-Erves.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All study procedures involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Bioethics Committee of Vanderbilt University (IRB #: 171110).

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Cunningham-Erves, J., Mayo-Gamble, T.L., Hull, P.C. et al. A pilot study of a culturally-appropriate, educational intervention to increase participation in cancer clinical trials among African Americans and Latinos. Cancer Causes Control 32, 953–963 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-021-01449-7

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