The participation of African Americans in clinical and public health research is essential. However, for a multitude of reasons, participation is low in many research studies. This article reviews the literature that substantiates barriers to participation and the legacy of past abuses of human subjects through research. The article then reports the results of seven focus groups with 60 African Americans in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta during the winter of 1997. In order to improve recruitment and retention in research, the focus group study examined knowledge of and attitudes toward medical research, knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and reactions to the Home Box Office production, Miss Evers' Boys, a fictionalized version of the Tuskegee Study, that premiered in February, 1997. The study found that accurate knowledge about research was limited; lack of understanding and trust of informed consent procedures was problematic; and distrust of researchers posed a substantial barrier to recruitment. Additionally, the study found that, in general, participants believed that research was important, but they clearly distinguished between types of research they would be willing to consider participating in and their motivations for doing so.

This research presents an integration of past research and theory that models the impact of stressful aspects of the workplace and key communication variables on employee burnout, occupational commitment, and work satisfaction. Two theoretical frameworks—social information processing theory (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1978) and uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975)—are drawn on to propose a model in which communication variables lead to two stress variables then to burnout and finally to job satisfaction and occupational commitment. Data to test the proposed models were drawn from employees at a private psychiatric hospital. The results indicate that both participation in decision making and social support have important impacts on perceived workplace stress, burnout, satisfaction, and commitment for both care-givers and support personnel. Perception of participation in the decision-making process was found to be particularly crucial in reducing role stress and increasing perceptions of satisfaction and personal accomplishment for hospital care-givers. The implications of the model for theory and practice are discussed.

(1) Highlight that breast cancer risk increases with age (and does not decline in the absence of risk factors) and communicate the correct frequency for having mammograms; (2) expand primary care physicians' roles in promoting mammography screening for women 65+; and (3) provide Medicare coverage information to older women, particularly those not taking advantage of this benefit.

To identify and describe implementation of state-level informed consent requirements for adolescent immunizations, current state regulations on informed consent and immunization services for children and adolescents were identified through the LEXIS-NEXIS legal data base. Regulations were coded for informed consent characteristics, consent exemptions, and current immunization requirements. State immunization program directors, project managers, and state hepatitis coordinators were surveyed to catalogue how regulations were implemented and document new policies or regulations under consideration. Parental consent for immunizations is standard practice in 43 states. Most states (n = 34) require separate consent for each injection when more than one injection is required to complete a vaccination, but only for a limited number of medical procedures. Nine states allow adolescents to self-consent for hepatitis B vaccination in sexually transmitted disease clinics and family planning clinics as part of the exemption for minors' receipt of sexual health services. Most states require consent for vaccination services provided to adolescents. Parental consent requirements are a potential barrier to vaccinating adolescents in some settings.

This article reports on research that explored the experience of stress and burnout, and the influence of communicative variables on stress and burnout, in four distinct employee groups within a single organization. Research and theory reviewed suggest that distinctions in job characteristics and organizational subcultures should influence relationships among stressors, burnout, and communicative behaviors for different occupations. The research conducted bears this out. There were not large differences among employee groups in terms of levels of stress, burnout, and satisfaction, or in the relationships between stressors and burnout and between burnout and satisfaction. However, the role of communication in the burnout process varied in the different employee groups. Participation in decision making had a large impact on burnout for administrative employees and support from co-workers had a large effect on burnout for nursing employees.