SURVEY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN PHYSICIANS AND PATIENTS

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DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) Recruitment of African-Americans to Phase III screening an d prevention trials is difficult. Our participation as a study site for SWOG-9217: "Chemoprevention of Prostate Cancer with Finasteride (Proscar)" has confirmed this. While recent reports have emphasized the importance of minimizing barriers to minority participation in order to increase enrollment, we have identified important physician concerns which effectively prevent enrollment. Some African-American physicians believe that the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) was poorly conceived, is racist by design, and will fail to achieve its objectives. In addition, African-Americans patients fear being intentionally harmed by white physicians. While these fears are freely voiced by patients to individual health care workers, no formal documentation of these attitudes has been made. Some leaders in the African-American physician community hold the belief that African-Americans have not been involved in the planning and design of trials which require enrollment of African-Americans as study subjects. The proposed study will first validate then use new surveys designed to determine the how widely these beliefs are held. Patients involved in the PCPT will be surveyed, as well as members of the African-American Community who would be eligible for enrollment in this trial. The membership of the National Medical Association (NMA) will be surveyed at their annual meeting. We will determine what proportion of African-American physicians are actively opposed to enrolling their patients in the PCPT, and if potential subjects are aware of this opposition. We will determine the behavior, knowledge, and attitudes about participation in clinical trials of these study groups. The proposed pilot project will provide unique information which may be used in future studies, designed to test strategies to augment minority participation in clinical research.