Affiliations: [a] Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
| [b] John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA
| [c] Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
| [d] Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
| [e] Departments of Neurology and Epidemiology, Sergievsky Center, Taub Institute for Research on the Aging Brain, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Allison Caban-Holt, Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity, Wake Forest School of Medicine, 525 Vine St, Suite 150, Winston-Salem, NC 27012, USA. Tel.: +1 336 716 7919; E-mail:a.caban-holt@wakehealth.edu.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate attitudes toward brain donation and perceptions of medical research that influence brain donation among African Americans. Cross-sectional surveys were administered to African American community members (n = 227). Findings indicate that only 27% of respondents were willing to donate their brain. As medical mistrust was not found to be a significant barrier to research participation, there may be opportunity to increase brain donation by providing information about Alzheimer’s disease and brain donation to potential donors and their families so that informed decisions about participating in research can be made.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Black or African American, brain donation, dementia, medical mistrust, recruitment, research participation
