Biospecimen sharing among Hispanic women in a safety-net clinic: Implications for the precision medicine initiative

Abstract

Biospecimen donation is key to the PrecisionMedicine Initiative, which pioneers amodel for accelerating biomedical research through individualized care. Personalizedmedicine should bemade available tomedically underserved populations, including the large and growing US Hispanic population.We present results of a study of 140 Hispanic women who underwent a breast biopsy at a safety-net hospital and were randomly assigned to receive information and request for consent for biospecimen and data sharing by the patient's physician or a research assistant. Consent rates were high (97.1% and 92.9% in the physician and research assistant arms, respectively) and not different between groups (relative risk [RR] = 1.05, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.96 to 1.10). Consistent with a small but growing literature, we show that perceptions of Hispanics' unwillingness to participate in biospecimen sharing for research are not supported by data. Safety-net clinics and hospitals offer untapped possibilities for enhancing participation of underserved populations in the exciting Precision Medicine Initiative.