The faculties of Meharry Medical College and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine jointly propose a Minority ACTU in Nashville, Tennessee. this partnership between a historically black health care professions school and a well established research oriented majority school offers a unique environment in which to explore our national problem with the lack of minority participation in the AIDS clinical trials. The proposed ACTU program will explore a new concept for accomplishing AIDS clinical trials. It will be targeted to discovering techniques for improving recruitment, retention, and compliance of minorities, women and drug abusing AIDS patients. The targeted minority will be Black. The targeted women will especially involve child bearing. The targeted drug abusers will include patients who abuse non-injected as well as injected drugs. The unique feature of the program, the partnership between a minority and a majority institution, will be exploited to the fullest possible extent. Through the AMHPS AIDS Consortium, selected techniques will be further tested in other historically Black institutions. The objective will be to devise and test techniques that will work when exported to ACTUs that do not have such a minority affiliation, and to clinical sites that do not have an ACTU.
