There have been documented disparities in medical care and research, specifically for cancer, for African Americans that have been ongoing for years. As TrialSite reported previously, blacks have the highest death rate and shortest survival of any racial/ethnic group in the U.S. for most cancers. Perhaps the most striking example of this was the death of actor Chadwick Boseman at 43, which tragically highlighted the fact that after decades of professional discussion for the need for greater African American participation in research, the results continue to disappoint. 

These disparities between diagnosis and treatment for cancer in African Americans have been going on for over 20 years. “With specific attention to lung cancer, the participation of Black patients in clinical research still sits at somewhere between 6% and 8%, [and] it really hasn’t improved that much at all over time,” Ozuru O. Ukoha, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at Rush Medical College and chairman of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, Illinois, said in an interview with CancerNe…