Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases in Minority Communities

这个项目研究了风湿病在华盛顿大都会地区一个服务不足、以少数民族为主的社区的表现。通过NIAMS社区卫生中心，对风湿病患者进行评估，并为研究人员提供了解护理障碍的第一手经验。该项目支持在理解标准化自我报告结果评估工具方面的文化差异的研究，确定类风湿关节炎临床上重要的改善，在有风湿症状的患者中使用补充和替代药物，少数族裔个人对瑜伽作为治疗关节炎的可接受性，少数族裔对研究过程的了解和知情同意，以及以西班牙语和英语验证用于流行病学研究的类风湿关节炎病例发现问卷。此外，研究人员还检查了改善初级保健提供者和专科医生之间转诊过程的干预措施。

This project studies the expression of rheumatic diseases in an underserved, largely ethnic minority community in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Through the NIAMS Community Health Center, subjects with rheumatic complaints are evaluated and provide researchers with first-hand experience in understanding barriers to care. This project has supported research on cultural differences in understanding standardized self-report outcome assessment tools, determination of clinically important improvements in rheumatoid arthritis, use of complementary and alternative medicine in patients with rheumatic symptoms, acceptability of yoga as a treatment for arthritis by minority individuals, understanding of the research process and informed consent among ethnic minorities, and validation in Spanish and English of a rheumatoid arthritis case-finding questionnaire for use in epidemiological studies. In addition, researchers have examined interventions to improve the referral process between primary care providers and subspecialists.