Developing partnerships and recruiting dyads for a prostate cancer informed decision making program: lessons learned from a community-academic-clinical team.

Prostate cancer (PrCA) is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer among men. PrCA mortality in African-American (AA) men in South Carolina is ~50% higher than for AAs in the U.S as a whole. AA men also have low rates of participation in cancer research. This paper describes partnership development and recruitment efforts of a Community-Academic-Clinical research team for a PrCA education intervention with AA men and women that was designed to address the discordance between high rates of PrCA mortality and limited participation in cancer research. Guided by Vesey's framework on recruitment and retention of minority groups in research, recruitment strategies were selected and implemented following multiple brainstorming sessions with partners having established community relationships. Based on findings from these sessions culturally appropriate strategies are recommended for recruiting AA men and women for PrCA education research. Community-based research recruitment challenges and lessons learned are presented.