The overall goal of the Cancer Outreach Core (COC) is to reduce cancer health disparities among vulnerable migrant Pacific Islander populations living in Guam (GU) and Hawaii (HI). They are the Chamorro, Marshallese and Chuukese; the indigenous peoples of Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesian (FSM), respectively. There are over 16,000 migrant Pacific Islanders from the RMI and from the FSM living in GU and over 17,000 living in HI. They have a disparate cancer health status compared to the rest of the populations in HI, GU and the Continental US. The cancer disparities of interest are preventable cancers which have a significant incidence in the Micronesian populations. As an example, the Pacific Islander women from the RMI and FSM have among the highest incidence rates of cervical cancer in the world: 79.7 per 100,000 and 42.4 per 100,000 (2007-2011, age-adjusted to the 2000 US Standard) in the RMI and in Pohnpei State, FSM, respectively, compared to 9.9 per 100,000 women in the United States (US) (1). The COC will build on the 2003-2015 University of Guam (UOG)/University of Hawaii Cancer Center (UHCC) Comprehensive Partnership efforts to prevent and control cancer in Pacific Islander communities. Through established community partnerships, the COC has three main tasks: (1) outreach to primary care physicians (PCP) to reduce preventable cancers in Chamorro, Marshallese and Chuukese peoples, (2) outreach to the Chuukese, Marshallese and other health disparity communities to increase HPV vaccination rates among adolescents, and (3) assist U54 investigators with recruitment of Pacific Islander populations in support of studies focusing on cancer health disparities. Community Health Educators (CHE) who have worked with the target communities will support the COC outreach strategies and the NCI National Outreach Network's coordinated agenda. The COC activities align with the overall goals of the Comprehensive Partnership to Advance Cancer Health Equity (CPACHE), and support hypothesis-driven research as proposed elsewhere in this application (e.g. Pilot Project I, Full Project II).
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