): Candidate: This is the candidate's first faculty position as Assistant Professor in General Internal Medicine at the Univ. of Texas at Houston. During her fellowship at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown Univ. she completed work in biostatistics, epidemiology, moral philosophy and public health, and research that won the National Research Service Award from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and Health Resources and Services Administration. She gave oral presentations at the regional and national meetings of the Society of General Internal Medicine. An abstract of her work has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and the manuscript is currently under review for publication. She has recently been appointed to the State Prostate Cancer Advisory Committee (SPCAC) to the Texas Dept. of Health. Research: This K08 proposal builds upon the candidate's fellowship work about informed consent for prostate cancer screening with the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test and is a collaborative project with the SPCAC. Screening for prostate cancer with PSA is controversial because it is not clear whether it is an effective mass screening test. Until clinical trials resolve this issue, informed consent for PSA screening is recommended. Using a proposed standard of informed consent for PSA screening derived from her fellowship study, the candidate will study the content of informed consent in clinical practice. To determine which facts about PSA screening different health care providers consider important to disclose, she will conduct a nationwide survey of primary care providers. To determine which facts about PSA screening men in different health care settings know, she will survey men seeking care in managed care, university and private practices. Working with SPCAC, she will run focus groups to develop and pilot test a brochure with facts about PSA screening so that the Texas Dept. of Health can distribute it to the public during Prostate Awareness Week. This plan can be a potential role model for evaluating the content of informed consent for genetic screening tests for hereditary forms of breast cancer and colorectal cancer. This proposal will also give her the quantitative research skills needed to become a leading independent clinical investigator in the fields of biomedical ethics and cancer screening. Environment: The Texas medical Center, UT-School of Public Health and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center offer nationally known resources to meet the multidisciplinary needs of the candidate.
