Most Parents Unaware of Medical Research Opportunities for Their Kids

Eighty-four percent of parents say they don't know about opportunities for their children to participate in medical research; only 5 percent of children have participated in medical research across the United States

ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 25, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- One in nine adults have participated in medical research. In contrast, only one in 20 children have done so.

Those are the findings of a poll earlier this year by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. The poll asked adults and parents about their views on medical research and past participation for themselves and their children.

The poll also found that most adults (68%) are aware of medical research opportunities for adults. In contrast, the majority of parents (84%) are not aware of medical research opportunities for children.

"Medical research is the backbone of improving medical care. Without volunteers, medical research cannot move forward," says Matthew Davis, M.D., director of the poll and associate professor in the Child Health Evaluation and Research Unit at the U-M Medical School. "Awareness about research opportunities, which is a necessary step before participation, is reasonably high among adults but strikingly low for children's research. To improve participation rates among children, researchers and institutions evidently need to do a better job of getting the word out to parents."

Participation in research is key to continued medical progress, Davis says. Over the last 100 years, infant mortality in the United States has been reduced by 90 percent. Millions of deaths from diseases such as polio, diphtheria, pneumonia and influenza have been prevented by vaccines. Children with life-threatening diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and diabetes now survive beyond childhood, into adult years.

All these advances have been made possible through medical research. Successful pediatric research requires the voluntary participation of children and the support of their parents, Davis adds.

The poll also found that participation in medical research by adults is higher among non-Hispanic whites (14%) than among Hispanics (4%) or non-Hispanic blacks (2%).There are no racial/ethnic disparities for kids related to research participation. This positive finding sets an equitable foundation for efforts to expand awareness and recruit children from all backgrounds for medical research in the future.

For more information, please visit the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health:

http://www.med.umich.edu/mott/npch/

Resources:

UM Clinical Studies: http://www.umclinicalstudies.org/

Children and Clinical Studies:

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

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 Knowledge Networks, Inc. (KN), for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital via a method used in many published studies.  The survey was administered in January 2011 to a randomly selected, stratified group of adults age 18 or older (n=2,150) from the KN standing panel 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 54 percent among parent panel members contacted to participate.  The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1 to 3 percentage points.

To learn more about Knowledge Networks, visit www.knowledgenetworks.com.

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 Health System