Development of a Research Infrastructure for Understanding and Addressing Multiple Myeloma Disparities (MEDULLA)

Eligible patients will include AAs, Latinos and AANHPIs who were diagnosed with a first primary, pathologically confirmed MM within the previous five years and who were at least 21 years of age at the time of diagnosis. We will also include, as a comparison group, non-Hispanic White patients. Patients must have been diagnosed in one of counties of California. Patients must be alive at the time of study and able to provide informed consent. We will not include those who are unable to consent, pregnant women, or prisoners.

Initially, in the pilot phase, we randomly selected 100 eligible patients from each race/ethnicity mentioned above to participate in the pilot study. As the pilot has been completed, we now aim to contact at recruit 1,000 patients per race/ethnic group reported to all three population cancer registries in the state, including the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry and the Los Angeles Cancer Surveillance Program and Cancer Registry of Greater California until 2025. Patients diagnosis dates for the next phase of the study (June 2021-May 2025) will include diagnosis dates from 2018-2023, as there is a 2 year lag between patients cancer diagnosis and cancer registries information recorded.

Drs. Carvajal-Carmona and Cress have coordinated with MEDULLA investigators and CRGC research staff to develop a questionnaire for racial/ethnic minorities with Multiple Myeloma. The survey focuses on demographics, risk factors, cancer treatment, quality of life, and social determinants of health. All survey items are adapted from previously tested and validated surveys. The survey is expected to take approximately 30-45 minutes to complete.

CRGC staff, under Dr. Cress supervision, will identify eligible participants using the criteria described above based on diagnostic information in the CRGC database. The research team will be following California Cancer Registry policies and procedures for release of data. CRGC staff will extract patients contact information from the registry and will provide this information to research staff at UC Davis, who will work under Dr. Carvajal-Carmona's supervision.

The UC Davis Research team will initially mail each eligible participants a postcard and a survey study packet that will include: 1) Simple instruction sheet 2) An introductory letter that details the study 3) Information sheet that details on informed consent 4) Survey instruction sheet 5) A paper copy of the survey 5) Incentive selection sheet and option to continue to the second part of study 6) Brochures about the cancer registry and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and return pre-paid envelope.