Department of Communication, University of Kentucky.
Department of Integrated Strategic Communication, University of Kentucky.
Health Commun. 2023 Dec;38(13):2884-2893. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2022.2124061. Epub 2022 Sep 13.
African Americans' enrollment in health registries is low, negatively affecting their representation in clinical research. Young African Americans are particularly underrepresented. Because medical discoveries are typically based on findings from research that lacks minority representation, new treatments may not be equally effective with members of the African American community. This may further exacerbate health disparities. In this two-phase study, we first collected data from five focus groups to (a) investigate young African Americans' knowledge about and attitudes toward health registries and (b) explore their perceptions about current messages used to recruit participants into health registries. The findings from the first phase of our research showed that participants had limited awareness and understanding of health registries' functions and held negative attitudes toward research participation. In Phase 2, we conducted an experiment to compare the effects of a current message, a new message designed based on the findings from our Phase 1 study, and a control. Results showed mixed findings on the impact of the new targeted message. Based on the findings from both phases of this study, we present and discuss future strategies.
非裔美国人在健康注册中的参与率较低，这对他们在临床研究中的代表性产生了负面影响。年轻的非裔美国人的代表性尤其不足。由于医学发现通常基于缺乏少数族裔代表性的研究结果，新的治疗方法可能对非裔美国人群体的成员效果并不相同。这可能进一步加剧健康差距。在这项两阶段研究中，我们首先从五个焦点小组收集数据，以 (a) 调查年轻非裔美国人对健康注册的了解和态度，以及 (b) 探讨他们对目前用于招募健康注册参与者的信息的看法。我们研究第一阶段的结果表明，参与者对健康注册的功能知之甚少，并且对研究参与持有消极态度。在第二阶段，我们进行了一项实验，比较了当前信息、根据我们第一阶段研究结果设计的新信息和对照信息的效果。结果显示，新的有针对性信息的影响存在混合结果。基于这项研究的两个阶段的结果，我们提出并讨论了未来的策略。
