Offering African Americans Opportunities to Participate in Clinical Trials Research: How Social Workers Can Help‪.‬

As a group, African Americans often display ambivalence toward participating in clinical research trials largely because of a lack of trust of the mostly white research establishment (Corbie-Smith ,Thomas ,Williams, & Moddy-Ayers, 1999; Holcombe, Jacobson, Li, & Moinpour, 1999; Killien et al., 2000; Sengupta et al., 2000; Shavers, Lynch, & Burmeister, 2000). Reluctance to participate is understandable based on historical events, most notably the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that began in the 1930s and from the early 1950s to its conclusion in 1972 denied penicillin to African American participants who had syphilis. The degree to which Tuskegee remains a contributing factor to African American hesitance to take part in research is debatable (Corbie-Smith et al.; Hatchett, Holmes, Duran, & Davis, 2000; Shavers et al.), but it remains an undisputable example of abuse and misuse of the research process. Currently, there is a 10- to 12-year period for medications to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for public use, and this can mean long waits for those who need the advantages of new treatments. Clinical research participants usually have a three- to five-year head start over the general public in obtaining new drugs. Although there are risks in joining clinical research trials as well as in taking new medications, potential benefits must be considered as well. For diseases with high African American prevalence rates, such as prostate cancer, hypertension, and high African American mortality rates, such as for breast cancer (Ashing-Giwa, 1999; Kingston & Smith, 1997; Stallings et al., 2000), clinical trial participation can mean fast access to life-saving medicines.