Barriers to cancer clinical trial participation among American Indian and Alaska Native tribal college students.

Purpose: American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIs/ANs) have some of the highest cancer-related mortality rates of all US racial and ethnic groups, but they are underrepresented in clinical trials. We sought to identify factors that influence willingness to participate in cancer clinical trials among AI/AN tribal college students, and to compare attitudes toward clinical trial participation among these students with attitudes among older AI/AN adults.

Methods: Questionnaire data from 489 AI/AN tribal college students were collected and analyzed along with previously collected data from 112 older AI/AN adults.

Influence of framing and graphic format on comprehension of risk information among American Indian tribal college students.

We evaluated methods for presenting risk information by administering six versions of an anonymous survey to 489 American Indian tribal college students. All surveys presented identical numeric information, but framing varied. Half expressed prevention benefits as relative risk reduction, half as absolute risk reduction.

Health numeracy and understanding of risk among older American Indians and Alaska Natives.

American Indian and Alaska Native people suffer extreme health disparities and remain underrepresented in health research. This population needs adequate numeracy skills to make informed decisions about health care and research participation, yet little is known about their numeracy skills. Participants were 91 American Indian and Alaska Native elders who completed an anonymous survey that measured numeracy and the correlation between framing of risk and comprehension of risk.

Influence of graphic format on comprehension of risk information among American Indians.

Background: Presentation of risk information influences patients' ability to interpret health care options. Little is known about this relationship between risk presentation and interpretation among American Indians.

Methods: Three hundred American Indian employees on a western American Indian reservation were invited to complete an anonymous written survey.

Publication trends in the medical informatics literature: 20 years of "Medical Informatics" in MeSH.

Background: The purpose of this study is to identify publication output, and research areas, as well as descriptively and quantitatively characterize the field of medical informatics through publication trend analysis over a twenty year period (1987-2006).

Methods: A bibliometric analysis of medical informatics citations indexed in Medline was performed using publication trends, journal frequency, impact factors, MeSH term frequencies and characteristics of citations.

Results: There were 77,023 medical informatics articles published during this 20 year period in 4,644 unique journals.

Barriers to cancer clinical trial participation among Native elders.

Objectives: American Indians/Alaska Natives are underrepresented in clinical trials. Therefore, they must participate in large-scale cancer clinical trials to ensure the generalizability of trial results and improve their access to high-quality treatment. Our goal was to identify factors that influenced participation in cancer clinical trials among American Indians/Alaska Natives.

Publication trends and impact factors in the Medical Informatics literature.

We survey the "evolution" of the field of Medical Informatics by describing trends in volume(quantity) of Medical Informatics-indexed publications, identifying major journals of publication and their focus areas and presenting trends in impact factor scores during the 1994-2003 period. Changes in total impact-scores suggest an increasing trend of publication in journals of higher impact.

Birth outcomes among American Indian/Alaska Native women with diabetes in pregnancy.

Objective: To describe perinatal outcomes and maternal characteristics among American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) women with diabetes in pregnancy.

Study Design: A retrospective analysis of live births to AI/AN, African American and white women with diabetes (242,715) during pregnancy for the 1989-1991 period (latest available at the time of study) was conducted utilizing a linked birth/infant death database from the National Center for Health Statistics. AI/AN perinatal outcomes and maternal characteristics were compared to those of African American and white women.