Increasing African-American participation in medical research is challenging for a number of understandable and well-documented reasons. In part, many African Americans may mistrust medical research and the medical establishment based on past abuses, such as the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. However, several NIA-supported Alzheimer’s Disease Center (ADC) researchers, in collaboration with members of their local African-American communities, are developing straightforward but highly effective ways to overcome barriers to clinical trial recruitment and post mortem brain donation.
The need to overcome this lagging participation is vital in light of research indicating older African Americans may be at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s dementia than other groups in the United States, according to Dr. Carl V. Hill, director of the NIA Office of Special Populations.
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