The mission of the Gender and Ethnic Diversity Committee is to improve the inclusion of women and minorities as subjects in clinical oncology research trials. In addition, we evaluate any scientific evidence of differences in either toxicity or response to treatment between the various patient populations served. The NCCTG has the highest accrual of American Indian patients to clinical trials of any cooperative group in the country. Until the recent inclusion of new NCCTG sites with geographic access to minority populations, we did not have significant numbers of Black, Hispanic, or Asian patients. That pattern is changing. The inclusion of Howard University in the NCCTG is a major opportunity to extend the benefits of our clinical trials research to the African American population. Historically, we have enrolled 4-5% minorities on NCCTG treatment trials overall. Our greatest success in enhanced accrual in the past few years has been within the cancer control trials, where in 1998 twenty-one (21)% of patients accrued to such trials were minority patients. In 1996, we developed a protocol to work with tribes to assess breast cancer risk factors and mammographic breast density in American Indian women. The network for Cancer Control Research was conduct4ed in North and South Dakota at NCCTG sites and then expanded to 21 tribes served by the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona and the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. In 1998, the Alaska Native Medical Center invited us to extend participation to their site. Another research protocol seeks to measure a selected panel of molecular markers in American Indian/Alaska Native breast cancer patients who were treated in the Aberdeen, Phoenix, or Alaska areas of the Indian Health Service. We will determine which (if any) molecular markers provide independent prognostic information in this group and compare them to matched Caucasian patients previously analyzed on NCCTG protocol 77-30-51. This type of study can yield unique insights into our understanding of whether poorer survival stage-dependent only or linked to basic molecular marker profiling.
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