CCTS Provides Vaccines, Research Participation Info at 2022 Festival Latino de Lexington

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 12, 2022) – Members of three CCTS teams recently hosted booths at the Festival Latino de Lexington Health Fair on Sunday, Oct. 2.

The Participant Recruitment Services (PRS) and Wellness, Health & You (WHY) teams hosted to connect with community members and share information about participating in health research. While Latinos comprise around 18% of the U.S. population, only 8% of clinical trial participants are from this community. An array of barriers—socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic, logistical—contribute to this disparity.

Richard Sanchez, participant recruitment specialist for the CCTS, was one of our representatives.

“Attending events like the Latino Health Fair is crucial in our goal to engage with underrepresented minorities. Due to many cultural factors, health literacy, and the fact that invitations to participate in clinical trials are mostly in English, it can discourage Latino population participation in clinical trials. I feel like being there in-person and being able to talk to people face-to-face in Spanish helps point the CCTS Participant Recruitment Services team towards the right direction to eliminate barriers for Latinos to participate in clinical trials,” he said.

“After being able to talk with many members of the Latino community that day, I realized that many of them didn’t know or didn’t have much information about participating in clinical trials. So, I feel like many people hesitate and/or are hesitant to have their family member participate in clinical trials because they didn’t know the purpose and the benefits.”

CCTS staff who are part of a CDC vaccine outreach grant also hosted a booth at the Festival, where they administered a total of 52 COVID, flu, and tetanus vaccines.

“The CDC PANDEMIC grant, part of a larger program of community outreach called ‘Our Community. Our Health,’ is focused on providing access to all adult vaccines in our rural communities and within our diverse and minority populations in Lexington,” said Lynn Warneke, CCTS research program manager for the grant. “This program is designed to reach further into our communities where the barriers for accessing health care are the greatest. By taking health care to where people are, we’re hoping to remove logistical and other accessibility barriers by providing an opportunity for people to easily receive vaccines.”

You can find the CCTS vaccine outreach event at the upcoming Hispanic Heritage Month Health Fair of Danville, to be held Wed., Oct. 19 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Boyle County Extension Office (99 Corporate Drive, Danville, KY 40422).

Would you like a representative from the CCTS to attend your event or talk to your group about participating in research? Contact our CCTS Community Engagement and Participant Recruitment Services (PRS) project manager, Ashley Hall, MS, at agtayl3@uky.edu.

Media Contact: Mallory Profeta, mallory.profeta@uky.edu