Establishing Centers to Address Treatment Effectiveness in Diverse Ethnic Groups: The MEDTEP Experience

Abstract

Objective. To investigate racial ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes amenable to improvement through more effective delivery of health care services. Design. 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.