Health Disparities

Mayo Clinic is dedicated to advancing minority health and wellness and ending health disparities. Through education and awareness, personalized health care and innovative research, Mayo Clinic strives to eliminate disparities and to help prevent and reduce illness and death in minority populations.

Towards this end, Mayo Clinic is committed to provide the best cancer care to all patients. This commitment encompasses the recruitment of women and minorities to clinical trials that aim to improve the condition of cancer patients, increase treatment opportunities, and define the best practice for the control and cure of cancer in each patient.

Fostering female participation in clinical trials

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has long included women in clinical trials. Since 2003, more than 28,000 women cancer patients have sought treatment at Mayo Clinic; almost 11 percent of those patients elected to participate in Mayo Clinic Cancer Center clinical trials. While women cancer patients comprise 42 percent of all patients treated for cancer at Mayo Clinic, 48.4 percent of all cancer patients who contribute to clinical trials are female.

Ensuring ethnically diverse populations

Mayo Clinic focuses on ensuring best practice health care to all patients, regardless of race or ethnicity. Mayo Clinic Cancer Center actively builds upon programs and initiatives to attract and include minority representation in clinical trials and clinical research. Inclusion of patients from diverse populations in Mayo Clinic Canter Center studies is designed to expand our knowledge and understanding of best practice for all cancer patients, and provide crucial insights for patients from populations with specific race or ethnicity related cancers or disparities.

Mayo Clinic outreach to cancer patients from underserved or diverse populations spans the nation through its three geographically distinct locations. Innovations in Mayo Clinic Cancer Center initiatives build upon the opportunities presented by Mayo Clinic practices in Arizona and Florida, where larger communities of Native Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, and African Americans reside, and where members of those communities seek cancer care in greater numbers. In Minnesota, efforts focus on smaller communities of Hispanics, Native Americans, Somali African Americans, Cambodians, and Hmong who reside within the geographic region served by Mayo Clinic Rochester. The focus of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center research interests in diverse populations is integrated within the scope of its Programs and Disease Oriented Groups.

Mayo Clinic has committed $1.3 million per year for five years for both its Arizona and its Florida campuses to increase diverse population participation in clinical studies. This totals $13 million which will be used to expand the research faculty base across all three Mayo campuses, and to implement Cancer Disparities Shared Resource services and outreach to bolster local diverse participation in therapeutic, prevention, early detection and screening trials.

• Outreach to American Indians and Alaska Natives
• Mayo Clinic Cancer Center Southeast U.S. Diversity Outreach
• Mayo Clinic Cancer Center Southwest U.S. Diversity Outreach