Successful recruiting of African Americans for research
Following Dr. Febbo’s talk, Karriem Watson, MS, spoke about some potential solutions to the issue, including his own experiences and success stories in recruiting African Americans to play active roles in research. He is chief engagement officer for the National Institute of Health’s All of Us Research Program, which aims to gather health data on at least 1 million residents of the United States. Mr. Watson has spent time reaching out to people living in communities in the Chicago area to encourage participation in breast cancer screening. An event at his church inspired his own sister to get a mammogram, and she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.
“I’m a living witness that early engagement can lead to early detection,” said Mr. Watson during his talk.
He reported that the All of Us research program has succeeded in creating diversity within its data collection, as 46.7% of participants identify as racial and ethnic minorities.
Mr. Watson took issue with the common perception that underrepresented communities may be hard to reach.
“I want to challenge us to think outside the box and really ask ourselves: Are populations hard to reach, or are there opportunities for us to do better and more intentional engagement?” He went on to describe a program to recruit African American men as citizen scientists. He and his colleagues developed a network that included barbers, faith leaders, and fraternity and civic organization members to help recruit participants for a prostate cancer screening project. They exceeded their initial recruitment goal.
They went on to develop a network of barbers in the south and west sides of Chicago to recruit individuals to participate in studies of protein methylation and lung cancer screening, as well as a project that investigated associations between neighborhood of residence and lung cancer. The results of those efforts have also informed other projects, including a smoking cessation study. “We’ve not only included African American men in our research, but we’ve included them as part of our research team,” said Mr. Watson.
Dr. Febbo is also a stockholder of Illumina. Mr. Watson has no relevant financial disclosures.
From American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2023: Improving cancer outcomes through equitable access to cfDNA tests. Presented Monday, April 17, 2023.