Development of Strategies to Increase Enrollment in Clinical Trials for Children With Cancer

OBJECTIVES: I. Identify prospectively physician and patient factors associated with reasons why patients who are eligible for Pediatric Oncology Group therapeutic protocols are not enrolled onto such studies. II. Provide information that may be used to develop intervention strategies to decrease barriers to patient enrollment, thus increasing enrollment in therapeutic protocols. OUTLINE: This is a case-control, multicenter study. Case patients are stratified. Stratum 1 comprises patients for whom there is an appropriate Pediatric Oncology Group (POG) frontline therapeutic protocol that has not yet been submitted to, disapproved by, or approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Stratum 2 comprises patients for whom there is an appropriate POG frontline therapeutic protocol that has been approved by the IRB. Physicians complete an IRB submission form for their patients on stratum 1. Patients/parents on stratum 2 who refused enrollment and their primary physicians complete questionnaires that address reasons for nonenrollment. Control patients/parents who consented to enrollment complete questionnaires that address reasons for enrollment. Demographic information, including the size of the treating institution and the annual number of patients enrolled onto its protocols, is collected. Additional demographic information regarding the patient and his or her family is collected. PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 595 case patients (12 with soft tissue sarcoma, 34 with osteosarcoma, 19 with brain tumors, 32 with Hodgkin's disease, 60 with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, 278 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 65 with acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, 56 with neuroblastoma, 14 with hepatoblastoma, and 25 with germ cell tumors) will be accrued for this study within 7 years. Corresponding control patients will be accrued for this study.