Salud America! Gets $650,000 Genentech Grant to Bring More Latinos into Cancer, Alzheimer’s Research

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Did you know that Latinos represent 18.5% of the U.S. population, but are less than 10% of those in federal cancer and drug studies?

This makes it hard for researchers to create treatments that work best for Latinos.

To engage more Latinos in research, the Salud America! program at UT Health San Antonio has received a three-year, $650,000 grant from Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to create Latino-focused recruitment strategies and systems for clinical trials in cancer treatment and Alzheimer’s disease.

Salud America!, established in 2007, produces culturally relevant multimedia research, tools, and stories to fuel its digital network—over 400,000 moms and dads and health, community, and school leaders across the nation—to change systems and environments toward health equity, where everyone has a fair, just opportunity to be healthy.

The new funding, part of Genentech and The Genentech Foundation’s $16 million initiative to promote health equity and diversity in STEM, will help Salud America! expand its work into inclusive clinical trial promotion and recruitment.

“We are honored Genentech chose us for the important task of bringing more Latinos and diversity to cancer and Alzheimer’s clinical trials, which can help researchers save more lives,” said Dr. Amelie G. Ramirez, director of Salud America! and the Institute for Health Promotion Research in the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio.

Latinos suffer high rates of discrimination, and face barriers in access to healthcare, stable housing and transit, social support, healthy food, and other health-promoting assets.

As a result, they suffer many health disparities. For example, Latinos have higher rates and worse outcomes than their white peers for liver, stomach, and cervical cancers, and are 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

One solution is to enroll more Latinos in clinical trials.

In trials, researchers test life-saving treatments and prevention activities. But Latinos account for less than 10% of people in federal cancer clinical trials and fewer than 4% of FDA drug trials.

“Our Genentech support will allow us to use culturally relevant digital health communications, advocacy networks, and clinical partnerships to promote health equity and advance clinical trials for cancer treatment and Alzheimer’s disease among Latinos,” Ramirez said.

Salud America! will work to:

• improve Latino understanding of clinical trials and biobanking;
• increase Latinos’ self and collective efficacy for enrolling in clinical trials and biobanking;
• increase awareness of how unconscious biases and discrimination against Latinos curtails recruitment to clinical trials and biobanking;
• improve patient-provider communication and trust; and
• increase self and collective efficacy for participating in advocacy to promote policies and systems that reduce bias in healthcare settings and remove barriers to Latino participation in clinical trials and biobanking.

The effort will target Latinos at both the national and South Texas levels.

“Our national-level outreach will occur primarily via culturally relevant, mobile friendly, online educational materials to promote Latino participation in clinical trials and biobanking for cancer and Alzheimer’s,” Ramirez said. “We also will conduct a local-level pilot study to increase recruitment of Latino patients to cancer clinical trials.”

Salud America!’s new grant is one of 16 projects funded through Genentech’s Health Equity Innovation Fund. Another 24 projects are funded through “The Diverse Future of STEM Fund.”

“During the selection process, we prioritized applications that demonstrated principles of justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the design of their projects, as well as efforts led by People of Color or that embraced deep partnership and power-sharing with historically marginalized communities,” according to an editorial by Kristin Campbell Reed, executive director of corporate and employee giving and The Genentech Foundation.

“By leveraging charitable giving to uncover and address the root causes of disparities in healthcare and education, and working together to commit to change─I believe we have a real chance at true progress.”

Learn more about Salud America! at www.salud-america.org.