Description of your demographics required for all protocols:
[Although the majority of residents in Rochester, Minnesota and surrounding counties are White, recent population estimates from over the past decade have indicated that minorities make up a significantly larger segment of our communities. According to census area data such cultural groups as the Somalians, Hispanic/Latinos, and South East Asians have increased the percentage of minorities living in Olmsted County from 3% in 1990 to nearly 10% in 2000.]
Collaborative recruitment efforts:
Despite the increases in the number of minorities within rural Rochester, Minnesota, it is probable that recruitment will fall short in the area of minority participation. [In order to confront this issue, we established collaborations with Dr. Jeanine Albu in New York, NY, and Dr. Samuel Klein in Washington University of St. Louis to enhance volunteer recruitment.] Unfortunately, neither center had the anticipated success recruiting for these studies. We have been unable to get timely recruitment of subjects and timely transfer of data from our colleagues in New York City as well as in St. Louis.
Perceived barriers in conduction minority recruitment:
[The problem with minority recruitment could possibly be explained that persons of color are less likely to participate in research in general and when they do participate in research they are more likely to participate in studies with less invasive procedures. Thus, we anticipate that minority participants in these studies of basic human physiology will likely continue to be at or below their representation in the Olmsted county population.]
Ethnic/Racial baseline explaining no ethnic/racial differences in condition studied:
[Although there are clearly differences between some ethnic groups in some disease aspects, our preliminary data indicate that our minority participants do not differ from our non-minority participants with respect to the issues in question.] The figure below depicts our data regarding the relationship between resting energy expenditure (REE) and palmitate flux in Caucasian men and African-American men (the ethnic minority group for which we have had most success at collecting complete data sets).
Institutional capacity and support:
[Our plans for encouraging minority participation include working with the Mayo Clinic Office of Diversity in Clinical Research to develop complementary community-based strategies for recruitment of minorities at Mayo Clinic Rochester and our two other proposed sites in New York and St. Louis. Through new initiatives of community outreach within this office, incorporating cultural advisors, lead interpreters, and community elders with clinical research teams and collaborative community agencies, we anticipate slowly increasing participation of persons of color in this type of research.]
Acknowledge potential for ethnic/racial differences in the research. Document recruitment efforts:
[Because our studies are not of a therapeutic nature, and because we have looked for and not found ethnic differences in our studies of fatty acid metabolism, we believe that our current recruitment approach is the best one at this time. Nevertheless, we will continue to sort data by ethnicity and make concerted efforts to recruit from communities of color.] Should trends towards physiologically meaningful differences appear we would notify NIDDK and develop collaborative relationships to follow up on the ethnic group differences.
