With the current US population continuing to grow at its current pace, nearly 50% of the US population in 2050 will be from medically underserved, vulnerable populations. Substantial evidence exists for the underrepresentation of minorities (individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, people with disabilities and from disadvantaged backgrounds) in all levels of the biomedical workforce (from the undergraduate level to the professoriate). Racial/ethnic populations demonstrate increased incidence and/or more aggressive disease for specific cancer types. Even when accounting for socioeconomic and access to care factors, incidence and mortality differences persist between racial/ethnic populations for some cancer types. Recent studies indicate that these unequal cancer burdens may be due to a complex biology that needs to be investigated to increase our basic understanding of cancer health disparities. There is a lack of diversity in the professional fields of healthcare and research, which strive to treat and eliminate the health disparities that exist in cancer prevalent throughout the United States. This proposal will focus on promoting diversity in individuals engaged cancer research and cancer disparities by developing a partnership between the Institute for Cancer Research at University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC) and Langston University (LU), the only historically black college in Oklahoma. The Objective of the proposed partnership is to promote cancer-related research, cancer research experience and cancer education to undergraduate students and junior faculty. Each of the activities will be jointly developed and implemented at LU and UNTHSC. We will meet our objectives through three Specific Aims:
Aim 1) Establish an Administrative Core (AC) that will be responsible for the overall implementation, management, and evaluation of the success of the various components of the partnership, Aim 2) Promote interdisciplinary and collaborative cancer research involving faculty from UNTHSC and LU, and support two pilot research projects, and Aim 3) Develop a Cancer Research Education Program (CREP) that provides students and junior faculty with cancer education, cancer research experiences, experimental design, interprofessional education (IPE) and health disparities. Our expectation is that by meeting our objectives, we will directly impact eventual achievement of our goal of establishing a long- term partnership between LU and UNTHSC with an ultimate outcome of obtaining a diverse population comprised of underrepresented populations in health disparity research related to cancer. Innovative features of proposed partnership program are (1) focus on the development of research excellence and professionalism in cancer and health disparities among the underrepresented and disadvantageous scholars; (2) extended active coaching integrated with interprofessional training programs and academic training, and (3) developing interdisciplinary cancer research teams. These activities will have a significant impact on increasing the success of URM and other disadvantaged groups in health disparity research related to cancer.
There are three overarching goals of this project: 1) Plan and implement a collaborative partnership between Langston University and UNT Health Science Center. 2) Support two collaborative pilot cancer research projects and 3) Provide cancer education, cancer research training and professional development to underrepresented minority students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds and disabilities who will pursue cancer disparity research.
