Abstract A036: Active patient and stakeholder engagement was critical to the success of a comparative trial to reduce liver cancer disparities for underserved Asian Americans with HBV Free

Background: Asian Americans are a liver cancer disparity population and a chronic hepatitis B (CHB) disparity population. Seventy-five percent of hepatocellular carcinoma cases are developed from CHB. Moreover, in the past decades, patient and stakeholder engagement has been an emerging infrastructure in the research process. This study aims to examine the influences of patient and stakeholder engagement, an emerging infrastructure in the research process, on reducing liver cancer disparities among underserved Asian Americans with CHB. Method: A 3-year fieldwork was conducted in a broader HBV project to observe the influences of patient and stakeholder engagement. Twenty-five patient partners/caregivers, physicians, and community advocate stakeholders were engaged through numerous regular in-person meetings and teleconferences in project conceptualization, study design, patients recruitment and retention strategies, intervention components development (message and materials review/feedback, education content review/feedback), outcome measurement assessment tools, and quality control. Moreover, the engagement experiences from patients and stakeholders were examined using the Bell-Elkins questionnaire with 25 survey forms. Results: the survey indicated that there is a unanimous agreement of partnership engagement in shared mission, goals and values, and measurable outcomes (e.g., community-campus partnership, collective decisions, effective communication, resource shared, addressed weakness, and mutual trust and respect) addressed for the study. All of the 25 patient and stakeholders agreed that the partnership shared the same goals and values, the members had mutual trust and respect and they shared varied resources. A majority of them (84%-92%) believed that the partnership had effective communication, it was a true community-clinical-academic partnership, the decisions were collectively made, and it addressed its weaknesses. The fieldwork observation showed that the patient and stakeholder engagement can improve the study quality by enhancing intervention content, offering practical suggestions, promoting recruitment and increasing the retention rate. Furthermore, the adoption of the patient-centered strategy in the HBV project has resulted in significant benefits for patients, as patients can better manage their health when they are informed and supported. Full engagement empowered target populations to make lifestyle modifications, enhance patients’ HBV monitoring and treatment, and thus reducing the risk of developing liver cancer. Conclusion: the active involvement of patient and stakeholders can significantly empower the investigators and reduce the HBV patient’s liver cancer disparities among Asian Americans. In the future studies, the patient and stakeholders should be involve actively in the different stages of the project to improve the project quality, reduce cancer disparities, and improve the public health.

Citation Format: Wenyue Lu, Yin Tan, Michelle Naidoo, Aliyah Saber, Ming-Chin Yeh, Grace X Ma. Active patient and stakeholder engagement was critical to the success of a comparative trial to reduce liver cancer disparities for underserved Asian Americans with HBV [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Twelfth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2019 Sep 20-23; San Francisco, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl_2):Abstract nr A036.