Establishing centers to address treatment effectiveness in diverse ethnic groups: the MEDTEP experience.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes amenable to improvement through more effective delivery of health care services.


METHODS
The Medical Treatment Effectiveness Program (MEDTEP) Research Centers on Minority Populations were a group of centers in the USA funded to improve the effectiveness of medical diagnosis and treatment, to provide technical assistance to ethnic minority health researchers, to train new researchers, and to disseminate information to help ethnic minority patients and their health care providers.


RESULTS
Centers often provided many specific findings related to assessment of the magnitude of disparities in health outcomes and to approaches for eliminating these outcomes. The Centers were able to build community partnerships using an approach now defined as community-based participatory research. Centers changed the culture of their institutions by making them more aware of the need to train diverse investigators and do more to eliminate health disparities.


CONCLUSIONS
A key to the success of the Centers has been the unification of a cadre of committed investigators dedicated to the mentoring of minority health researchers and to the elimination of ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health. The MEDTEP Centers provide a model but there remains a need for continued work.
Washington
A Eugene
AE
Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations, Center for Aging in Diverse Communities, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), USA.
Nápoles-Springer
Anna
A
Forté
Deirdra A
DA
Alexander
Mark
M
Pérez-Stable
Eliseo J
EJ
D000047:Academies and Institutes / Q000458:organization & administration*; D002140:California; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008297:Male; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012935:Social Justice; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States; D014495:Universities