An Evaluation of Predictors that Could Influence African American/Blacks Willingness to Participate in Cancer Clinical Drug Trials

Purpose: Cancer clinical drug trials provide scientifically reliable and verifiable data on which the cancer healthcare community base their clinical practice and serve as the "gold standard" (Wallington et al., 2012, p. 335). Researchers have noted that a clinical drug study requires a diverse distribution of patients for the understanding of differences in disease state and response to treatment as well as for generalizability (Farmer, Jackson, Camacho, & Hall, 2007). Unfortunately, over the years participation in cancer clinical drug trials has suffered from the under-representation of ethnic and racial minority groups.;Method: The cross-sectional survey study assessed predictors that may influence the African American/Black willingness to participate (WTP) in cancer clinical drug trials. One hundred and eighty-seven AA/Blacks successfully completed a survey via the Internet. Chi-square test, t-tests, and logistic regression models were used to assess for correlations between the demographic variables (gender, age, country of birth, education, income, and health insurance), attitude and beliefs (awareness, benefit, knowledge, access, and trust) to WTP in a cancer clinical drug trials.;Results: Of the 187 respondents, 51 % were knowledgeable of clinical trials, 82% agreed that clinical trials provide a benefit, and 63% were more likely to participate in cancer clinical trials. There were significant positive correlations between respondents' age and WTP ( p=.014), knowledge and WTP (p=.021), agreed benefit to participating in cancer clinical drug trials and WTP (p=.002), and trust and WTP (p=.009).;Conclusions: These results support the hypothesis that improving the AA/Black community knowledge and understanding of cancer clinical drug trials, knowing the benefits of clinical trial participation, and improving the trust in medical research may potentially overcome the barriers to participation and subsequently increase recruitment of AA/Blacks in cancer clinical drug trials in the United States.