In the end, 402 study participants — about a quarter — identified as Hispanic of any race. Among them, nearly half chose to talk to a Spanish-speaking researcher.
Race and ethnicity may affect how well medications and other treatments work, Sanossian said, making it critical for stroke studies to reflect the population at large. Researchers, he said, must invest the time and money needed to hire Spanish-speaking staff and design Spanish materials for research projects.
Stroke is a top killer among Hispanics, ranking at No. 4. By comparison, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death for Americans overall and costs the nation about $34 billion a year.
As the nearly 57 million U.S. Hispanics and Latinos age and the population grows, stroke “may have a greater public health impact on them,” said Ralph L. Sacco, M.D., the chief of neurology at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and professor of neurology at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami.
Sacco has worked with Hispanic patients of Caribbean heritage in New York City and Miami over his three-decade career. The research community, he said, must step up its efforts to enlist study personnel who patients can identify with culturally. In the Northern Manhattan Study, for example, many Dominican-Americans readily signed up to participate in the stroke research because numerous staff members shared their heritage, Sacco said.
Sanossian plans to include Spanish-speaking researchers in future studies that include Hispanics.
And he has a message for Hispanics: “We would never be able to advance science without your participation. We want the therapies to be applied to people like you, like your family.”
