Browsing by Author "Freimuth, Vicki S."
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Item African Americans' views on research and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study(2001) Freimuth, Vicki S.; Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Thomas, Stephen B.; Cole, Galen; Zook, Eric; Duncan, TedThe participation of African Americans in clinical and public health research is essential. However, for a multitude of reasons, participation is low in many research studies. This article reviews the literature that substantiates barriers to participation and the legacy of past abuses of human subjects through research. The article then reports the results of seven focus groups with 60 African Americans in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta during the winter of 1997. In order to improve recruitment and retention in research, the focus group study examined knowledge of and attitudes toward medical research, knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and reactions to the Home Box Office production, Miss Evers' Boys, a fictionalized version of the Tuskegee Study, that premiered in February, 1997. The study found that accurate knowledge about research was limited; lack of understanding and trust of informed consent procedures was problematic; and distrust of researchers posed a substantial barrier to recruitment. Additionally, the study found that, in general, participants believed that research was important, but they clearly distinguished between types of research they would be willing to consider participating in and their motivations for doing so.Item Breaking down the monolith: Understanding flu vaccine uptake among African Americans(Elsevier, 2017-11-11) Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Jamison, Amelia; An, Ji; Freimuth, Vicki S.; Hancock, Gregory R.; Musa, DonaldBlack adults are significantly less likely to be immunized for seasonal influenza when compared to Whites. This persistent disparity contributes to increased influenza-related morbidity and mortality in the African American population. Most scholarship on vaccine disparities has compared Whites and Blacks. Employing Public Health Critical Race Praxis, this study seeks to shift the focus to explore differences within the Black population. Utilizing a nationally-representative 2015 survey of US Black adults (n = 806), we explore differences by gender, age, income, and education across vaccine-related measures (e.g., perceived risk, knowledge, attitudes) and racial factors (e.g. racial salience, racial fairness, perceived discrimination). We also explore differences by vaccine behavior in the past five years among those who vaccinate every year, most years but not all, once or twice, and never. Greater frequency of flu vaccine uptake was associated with better self-reported vaccine knowledge, more positive vaccine attitudes, more trust in the flu vaccine and the vaccine process, higher perceived disease risk, lower perceived risk of vaccine side effects, stronger subjective and moral norms, lower general vaccine hesitancy, higher confidence in the flu vaccine, and lower perceived barriers. Logistic regression results highlighted other significant differences among the groups, emphasizing areas to target for improved vaccination rates. We find great diversity within the Black community related to influenza immunization decisions, highlighting the need to “break down the monolith” in future research.