Hmong participants ’ reactions to return of individual and community pharmacogenetic research results: “A positive light for our community”

This study was conducted to create a culturally and linguistically appropriate format to return pharmacogenomic results and identify Minnesota Hmong research participants’ reactions to their personal and coll ective results. Using a community-based participatory research approach, researchers collaborated with Hmong community members to format the pharmacogenetic disclosure process. Three focus groups were completed with 24 Hmong participants and three major themes emerged using thematic analysis. Many H mong focus group participants viewed the results positively, finding them useful for themselves and their community as a means to optimize responses to and avoid harms from medicines. However, some participants expressed concerns about harms that the pharmacogenetic information could bring, includin g anxiety, misunderstanding, discrimination, exploitation, and lack of a clinician involvement in interpreting and applying the result. Many participants interpreted their results through an experiential lens, trusting their experience of medicines more than trusting genetic information, and through a cultural lens, expressing the belief that environmental factors may influence how people’s bodies respond to medicines by influencing their inherited flesh and blood (roj ntsha). Lastly, participants stressed the importance of disseminating the information while acknowledging the complex linguistic, educational, and cultural factors that limit understanding of the results. Resear...
Source: Journal of Community Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Source Type: research