The project also led to the creation of a culturally specific video about African Americans and clinical trials. The clinical trials video demonstrated positive effects in a quasi-experimental field test and in an experimental clinical test. In a test of adults over 40 who were not cancer patients there was a 19.3% point increase in persons expressing willingness to participate in a clinical trial if they heard a physician and saw the video versus a 4.1 % point increase among those who only heard the physician talk about clinical trials. In the clinical trials test among cancer patients, more than 50% of the patients seeing the video said that it helped them in deciding to participate in a clinical trial.
In addition to the clinical trials video, PHTV used focus groups with low-income African Americans to develop a cultural competency training video. Data collected from physicians who viewed the tape in a pilot presentation indicate this groundbreaking process for cultural competency training works. Almost 80% of the physicians who saw the training tape evaluated it as “very useful” or “useful” for their medical practice.
PHTV documented the effectiveness of its culturally-specific production process in a series of grants it received and successfully implemented through the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program. The Urban Cancer Projectenjoyed successful commercializationin a variety of projects funded by major pharmaceutical companies and CISCRP (Center for Information and Studies on Clinical Research Participation). These projects were designed to educate low-income African Americans and Hispanics about common chronic diseases and the importance of clinical research in developing new therapies. The conditions highlighted included cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, and respiratory diseases such as asthma and COPD. PHTV created a collection of patient education videos/DVDs for national distribution in English and produced a second series from the ground-up in Spanish.
Publications from the project
- J. Marks, W. Reed, K. Colby, and S. Ibrahim. 2004. “A Culturally Competent Approach to Cancer News and Education in an Inner-City Community: Focus Groups Findings.” Journal of Health Communication (2004), Vol. 9: 143-157.
- W. Reed, R. Dunn, and K. Colby. 2011. “Preventing Childhood Lead Poisoning.” Pp. 103-112 in Handbook of African American Health: Social and Behavioral Interventions, A. Lemelle, W. Reed, and S. Taylor, (Eds.). New York: Springer (2011).