Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death among Asian and Pacific Islander (API) and Hispanic women in the U.S., despite the fact that over 80% of these women have never smoked cigarettes. The low prevalence of smoking, heavy burden of lung cancer, and fast population growth rate among API and Hispanic women make them an ideal target population in which to examine risk factors for lung cancer other than tobacco smoking. Moreover, API women appear to be overrepresented among never-smokers with lung cancer, suggesting that they may have a higher prevalence of exposure or greater susceptibility to lung cancer risk factors other than smoking, whereas Hispanic women may have lower exposure or susceptibility to such risk factors. Therefore, as a precursor to launching a population-based case-control study of non-smoking-associated lung cancer among API and Hispanic women in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area, we propose to initiate a pilot study with the following specific aims: 1) to demonstrate the feasibility of identifying a representative sample of API and Hispanic women who have never smoked;2) to assess the level of personnel effort required to enroll approximately 560 representative, never-smoking API and Hispanic women as study controls;and 3) to compare the efficacy of three control recruitment methods among API and Hispanic women. We will use a surname-based targeted searching method to identify Chinese, Filipina, native Hawaiian, Hispanic, Asian Indian, Japanese, Pacific Islander, and Vietnamese women from subscription-based telephone and address directories. Eligible women will be asked to complete a brief telephone, mail, or Internet-based survey assessing sociodemographic characteristics. To assess the representativeness of enrolled subjects, we will compare their sociodemographic characteristics with current data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the California Health Interview Survey. We will compare the efficacy of recruitment methods by calculating participation rates among individuals contacted by telephone, mail, or both. This pilot study will serve as critical groundwork for a larger study aiming to understand, and ultimately prevent, the development of lung cancer in never-smokers. Asian and Pacific Islander (API) and Hispanic women rarely smoke, and it is unknown why so many of these women develop lung cancer-a leading cause of cancer death. This pilot study is an important step toward building a larger study to understand the causes of lung cancer in API and Hispanic women who have never smoked.
PI: Chang, Ellen T. NARRATIVE A sizeable proportion of lung cancer occurs in women who have never smoked tobacco. Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic women are substantially less likely to smoke than women in other racial/ethnic groups. To gather feasibility data for a population-based case-control study of non-smoking-associated lung cancer, this study aims to identify and enroll a representative sample of never-smoking Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic women from the Greater San Francisco Bay Area 3
| Wong, Celeste K; Horn-Ross, Pamela L; Gee, Gilbert C et al. (2016) Strategies for recruiting representative samples of Asian Americans for a population-based case-control study. J Epidemiol Community Health 70:974-82 |
