Medical research needs kids, but two-thirds of parents unaware of opportunities

Almost half of parents said they'd allow their children to take part if their child had the disease being studied, according to U-M's National Poll on Children's Health

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To improve healthcare for children, medical research that involves kids is a must.  Yet, only five percent of parents say their children have ever participated in any type of medical research, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.

However, in this month's poll, nearly one-half of parents said they are willing to have their children take part in research that involved testing a new medicine or a new vaccine, if their child had the disease being studied. More than three-quarters of parents are willing to have their children participate in research involving questions about mental health, eating or nutrition.

The poll surveyed 1,420 parents with a child aged 0 to 17 years old, from across the United States.

According to the poll, parents who are aware of medical research opportunities are more likely to have their children take part. But awareness is an issue: more than two-thirds of those polled indicated that they have never seen or heard about opportunities for children to participate in medical research.

"Children have a better chance of living healthier lives because of vaccinations, new medications and new diagnostic tests. But we wouldn't have those tools without medical research," says Matthew M. Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the National Poll on Children's Health and professor of pediatrics and internal medicine in the University of Michigan Health System..

"With this poll, we wanted to understand parents' willingness to allow their children to participate in medical research. The good news is that willingness is far higher than the current level of actual engagement in research. This means there is great opportunity for the medical research community to reach out to families and encourage them to take part in improving medical care."

In the poll, the willingness to have children take part differed by the type of study—higher for studies involving questions related to nutrition and mental illness; lower for studies involving exposure to a new medicine or vaccine.

The poll found that 43 percent of parents were willing to have their children participate in a study testing a new vaccine and 49 percent testing a new medicine. But 79 percent said they would allow their children to participate in studies on mental health, and 85 percent in studies involving eating or nutrition.

The National Poll on Children's Health has been measuring levels of participation by children in medical research since 2007.  The proportion of families whose children have taken part in research has not changed over this time period – from 4 percent in 2007, to 5 percent in 2011, to 5 percent in this latest poll.

"Five percent of families with children participating may not be enough to support important research efforts that the public has identified in previous polls – things like cures and treatments for childhood cancer, diabetes and assessing the safety of medications and vaccines," says Davis, who also is professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

"But the results indicate that a much bigger percentage of the public does understand the importance of medical research to advancing healthcare for children."

Researchers often struggle to get enough people to participate in studies that can make a real difference in healthcare discoveries, particularly when it comes to research for children.

"This poll shows that the research community needs to step up and find ways to better reach parents about opportunities for children to participate, answer parents' questions about benefits and risks of participation, and potentially broaden the types of studies available," Davis says.

Broadcast-quality video is available on request. See the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0f1aDDthtI

Full report: C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health

http://mottnpch.org/reports-surveys/medical-research-needs-kids-parents-not-aware-opportunities

Website: Check out the Poll's website: MottNPCH.org. You can search and browse over 80 NPCH Reports, suggest topics for future polls, share your opinion in a quick poll, and view information on popular topics. The National Poll on Children's Health team welcomes feedback on the website, including features you'd like to see added. To share feedback, e-mail [email protected].

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mottnpch

Twitter: @MottNPCH

Additional resources:
The Importance of Children in Clinical Studies

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/childrenandclinicalstudies/index.php

Should Your Child Be in a Clinical Trial?

http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm048699.htm

University of Michigan Clinical Studies
UMClinicalStudies.org

Purpose/Funding: The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health – based at the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Michigan and funded by the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and the University of Michigan Health System – is designed to measure major health care issues and trends for U.S. children.

Data Source: This report presents findings from a nationally representative household survey conducted exclusively by GfK Custom Research, LLC (GfK) for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies.  The survey was administered in June 2013 to a randomly selected, stratified group of parents age 18 or older with a child age 0-17 (n= 1,420), from GfK's web-enabled KnowledgePanel®, that closely resembles the U.S. population. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect population figures from the Census Bureau. The survey completion rate was 51 percent among panel members contacted to participate. The margin of error is ±1 to 3 percentage points and higher among subgroups.

Findings from the U-M C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health do not represent the opinions of the investigators or the opinions of the University of Michigan. 

SOURCE University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health