Building on nearly 25 years of experience as a model community oncology program, the Grand Rapids Clinical Oncology Program (GRCOP) seeks the opportunity to continue to meet our community's need for innovative and relevant studies of promising therapeutic modalities and cancer control research into the next decade. The GRCOP is a regional clinical trials program: a consortium of 7 hospitals within a 38 county service area in Western Michigan. Six component hospitals and one affiliate hospital bring together investigators from 5 cities: Grand Rapids, Holland, Battle Creek, Big Rapids, and Traverse City. The accrual service area represents over 26 percent of the state's metropolitan and rural populations. The GRCOP provides the only access to clinical trials in rural counties with low population density. The goal of the Grand Rapids Clinical Oncology Program is to contribute to scientific knowledge and to enhance the level of care in the community through participation in NCI sponsored clinical treatment and cancer control trials. Several aims describe the long-term objectives: to mobilize the existing GRCOP service area resources to increase accrual on NCI protocol studies, including minorities, women, and underserved populations; to provide our Grand Rapids CCOP participants an important opportunity to contribute to national research goals by providing access to the full range of available protocols by our continued work with our CCOP Research Bases (SWOG, CCG, NSABP, MDACC, and University of Michigan); to expand our longstanding commitment to cancer prevention and control research, exceeding our past record and retaining adherent participants for the duration of the BCPT and PCPT; and to promote the involvement of both primary care providers and other specialists in cancer prevention and control clinical trials. The methods used to achieve these goals include an extensive GRCOP network, a solid organizational base, and an outstanding data management program. Our GRCOP network incorporates strong links among the medical oncologists (46), multidisciplinary contributors (50), primary care collaborators (170), and member hospitals (7) within a tightly woven series of community healthcare programs and resources. This network is supported by a solid organizational structure for both the adult and pediatric components; a proven and comprehensive data management system for the timely collection and transmission of data to our five research bases; and ongoing Quality Control and Assurance programs to assure the highest possible data quality to our research bases for use in analyses and publications. The GRCOP expects to accumulate over 360 credits per year: with over 125 treatment credits and over 234 cancer control credits.
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