Spiritual beliefs and a historically-based distrust of clinical research may factor into Black patients' decisions about whether to participate in cancer trials, according to surveys of patients treated at two Baltimore medical centers. Findings will be presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting. This cross-sectional, descriptive study found lingering distrust in clinical research among Black patients, despite their self-reported trust in their cancer medical teams.
The surveys sought to shed light on what might be contributing to the growing underrepresentation of Black people in cancer trials and identify ways in which researchers might improve recruitment efforts so their findings can be generalizable to more diverse populations. When you offer someone participation in a clinical trial, the conversation has to go beyond the consent form. If we want to improve recruitment of underrepresented people in clinical research, we cannot just talk about trial goals.
We have to look beyond that to understand where the patient is coming from and what their priorities are." Charlyn Gomez, lead author of the study and medical student, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore "Our research has identified some really important themes that should be discussed with patients as part of the recruitment process, such as spirituality or faith, as well as recognizing the elephant in the room that is a justifiable mistrust stemming from stru.