Hawaiʻi residents have the highest life expectancy of any state in the country, and yet the life expectancy of Native Hawaiians lags over a decade behind residents of Asian ancestry. That's one of the health disparities discussed recently by a University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo faculty member on a new FDA podcast.
Deborah Taira, a professor in the UH Hilo Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy and a senior scientist at The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, discussed these and other health equity issues for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders on “Engaging Native Hawaiian Communities in Clinical Trials,” a new podcast produced by the FDA Office of Minority Health and Health Equity in its Health Equity Forum podcast series.
The podcast focuses on research conducted by Taira and Dr. Todd Seto, a practicing cardiologist, director of academic affairs at The Queen’s Health System, and professor and vice chair of the department of medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine. Their research aims to address and reduce health disparities experienced by people in the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities within the state.
“For Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, there has been a long history of invisibility,” Taira said. “They’ve often been grouped with Asian Americans or in another race category so when you look at clinical trials that have been conducted, it’s almost impossible to get data on those two specific ethnic groups. And yet, in the case of diabetes, the prevalence of the disease among those two groups is very high.”
The researchers’ current project involves building the necessary infrastructure for clinical trials.
“We’ve just completed a pilot study where we interviewed Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Filipino and White patients who were hospitalized with diabetes to determine their trust level in their physicians, beliefs about their medications, whether they’d be willing to participate in a clinical trial and what types of support they would need to do so,” Taira explained.
One important finding: better communication with those two groups is needed by medical professionals in order to gain the trust of patients to enroll them in clinical trials.
“We’ve found most patients have enormous trust in their healthcare providers so engaging with primary-care physicians and specialists is essential,” Taira said. “We need outreach and education for the primary care providers, and some of that could be done through curriculum at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi.”
Language challenges are also more prevalent among Pacific Islanders, Taira added.
“These patients can originally be from American Samoa, Western Samoa, Guam, Chuuk, Pompeii or Fiji. For many of them, English was not their first language. In some cases, they may not understand what a clinical trial is so outreach to these groups needs to be much different.”
The researchers say they’ve been encouraged by the level of interest seen from Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander patients in being involved in clinical trials.
“It’s been overwhelmingly positive so going forward, we hope to take advantage of that momentum and build on it,” Taira said.
Listen to the FDA podcast at: https://www.fda.gov/media/178023/download.