This application represents a partnership between Long Island University, a minority serving institution, and Columbia University?s Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a joint effort dedicated to reducing the unequal cancer burden in minority communities. It builds upon an already established research collaboration and is designed to strengthen that partnership through a series of activities. Its research and training components will focus on older minority populations in New York; the thrust is comparative cancer epidemiology, prevention, and control. The goal of this planning grant is to use pilot projects and other activities to develop ROls and other full-scale grants. The Principal Investigator has conducted several major population-based survey studies of older adults in Brooklyn?s large African American (AA) and African Caribbean (AC) community, including depression and anxiety disorder and coping and adaptation. This work has revealed striking social, psychological, and behavioral differences among US-born AAs and ACs and is virtually unique in exploring differences between ethnic subgroups of the AA community. The Co-Principal Investigator is an oncologist and epidemiologist with a strong track record in cancer research, notably colon and breast cancers. He has established comprehensive community links with the AA and Dominican populations of North Manhatten and much of his research, including educational and intervention programs, has been based on these populations. These two investigators have complementary backgrounds and strengths and each has access to special populations. Because NYC has one of the largest and most ethnically diverse populations in the country, the Principal Investigators wish to meld their institutions? strengths and resources and their own individual expertises, to explore comparative cancer-related behavioral and sociocultural issues. In Year 01 the Principal Investigators will extend their current study of breast cancer screening to a Dominican sample and extend the Co-Principal Investigators? current studies of academic detailing to a Brooklyn-based population of physicians. Additionally, there will be retreats and workshops for researchers from both institutions and minority faculty interested in cancer research to consolidate their partnership and to generate ideas for future pilot projects. In Years 02 and 03 pilot projects will be solicited and reviewed for funding. The coordination of this P20 will be facilitated by the geographic proximity of the two institutions, their scientific strength, and their commitment to similar programs in the past.
