Novel Recruitment Techniques for a Study of Culture-Specific Diet, Metabolic Variability, and Breast Cancer Risk in African-American Women

摘要

Little is known regarding explanations for racial disparities in breast cancer incidence among younger women and tumor aggressiveness, perhaps because of the difficulty in enrolling African-Americans into research studies. The purpose of this pilot study was to develop a novel method of recruitment, focused primarily on minority women, and investigate previously unexplored risk factors in breast cancer epidemiology. Eligible cases and controls are contacted by women who are breast cancer survivors and asked to participate in the study. To date, interviews have been completed for 248 women with breast cancer, aged 29-75, and l37 community controls. The participation rate the proportion of women who complete the study, is 76% for Caucasian women and 61% for African- Americans. The infrastructure for case-control epidemiological studies has been built, and a specimen bank was established to enable exploration of future hypotheses.