Donna L. Berry on Decision Support Systems for Minorities

Donna L. Berry, PhD, RN, AOCN, FAAN, Director, Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research in Nursing & Patient Care Services, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses improving treatment decision support systems for minority men with localized prostate cancer.

For the last 22 years, Berry says, an intervention has been developed to help men with prostate cancer decide what treatment approach is best for them. During a large trial, researchers found that there were no men using the application in Spanish. Berry says that this discovery created the need to do an in-depth test of Spanish-speaking men and to be sure the application was culturally sensitive for African American men.

This qualitative, in-depth study found that the literacy rate in the Spanish version was too high: Anyone with less than a college education was unable to understand what was being asked or coached.

Now, researchers are conducting a careful evaluation of black men and Latino men who speak English or Spanish to see how they use the application.