The Importance of Site Selection

Woo: Probably the most important thing I did was site selection. I did a lot of education, a lot of training on minority recruitment, but before I did any of that, I looked at the US census for the top ten cities of the highest density of minority populations. I literally have a heat map that I show all the time of the African American density population, and then Hispanic density population. And then I chose hospitals based upon their census of African Americans or Hispanics to participate in the study.

Edwards: A fully inclusive research team is really important because people from the community who are on your team can keep you out of trouble and head off disasters.

Woo: To everyone's surprise, we recruited African Americans and Hispanics so well that whites were lacking [chuckles] because we selected the sites so well. One of the hospitals we had in Atlanta is 95% African American population. Now that just made it so much easier for me to recruit in those population areas.