Impact of a community-centered intervention on knowledge, confidence, and attitudes toward clinical trials: A pilot...

Cancer clinical trials are essential to advancing the management of gynecologic cancers; however, women of color remain underrepresented despite experiencing disproportionately poor outcomes. Barriers to enrollment include skepticism, limited awareness, inadequate referral processes, and failure to offer trial participation. Community-based partnerships may help address these gaps.

We partnered with two Chicago-based community-based organizations serving African American and Hispanic women to co-develop a culturally tailored educational curriculum focused on gynecologic oncology clinical trials. Community leaders contributed to curriculum design to ensure cultural relevance. Anonymous pre- and post-session surveys assessed clinical trial knowledge, communication and decision self-efficacy, access and navigation, and trust-related attitudes using 10 Likert-scale items grouped into four thematic domains. Because responses were unlinked, pre- and post-groups were analyzed as independent samples using Mann-Whitney U tests with false discovery rate correction. Effect sizes were calculated using rank-biserial correlations.

Seventy-eight participants were included (51 African American, 27 Hispanic). Across the full cohort, the intervention was associated with significant improvements in clinical trial knowledge, communication and decision self-efficacy, and access and navigation (r = 0.28-0.32, all p < 0.001), with smaller, non-significant effects observed for trust-related attitudes. Among African American participants, eight of ten survey items demonstrated statistically significant post-intervention improvements, with small-to-moderate effect sizes (r = 0.28-0.47). Among Hispanic participants, effect sizes were consistently positive (r = 0.06-0.31), particularly for knowledge and access domains, but did not reach statistical significance due to limited power.

A community-engaged educational intervention was associated with improved clinical trial knowledge and self-efficacy among minoritized women, supporting further evaluation of community-partnered strategies to promote equitable clinical trial engagement.