Lessons Learned from a Community-Academic Project Using Telemedicine for Eye Screening Among Urban Latinos

The project highlighted considerations for working with Latino communities, demonstrated the importance of community partners to conduct effective community-engaged research, and explored effectiveness of a unique partnership that relied on clinical expertise and nonclinical community-engaged research expertise. Findings illuminate effort required to implement clinical telemedicine interventions in community settings.

Diabetes prevalence is increasing rapidly and disproportionately affects Latinos, who face greater risk for complications such as diabetic neuropathy.

This project partnered a Latino community center with clinical and community-engaged researchers to test the feasibility of telemedicine to provide retinal screenings to urban Latinos. Further, researchers aimed to understand cultural implications of using telemedicine with this population.

Pre- and post-study focus groups identified study participants' perceptions of screening process.

The research team concluded that telemedicine is feasible for providing early detection and care to urban Latino populations, and identified processes for conducting clinical trials within community settings.