This application, in response to RFA-CA-09-032, Community Networks Program (U54), proposes to continue our vibrant, comprehensive, and sustainable program to reduce disparities in breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers that adversely affect older, underserved, African American adults in southeast Michigan. Under CNP I, we have mobilized with extraordinary community partners to implement an integrated system of community-based participatory education, training, and research activities. Our regional CNP II Center will include four large urban areas severely impacted by economic hardship: Detroit, Inkster, Southfield, and Pontiac. This tri-county area accounts for 71.3% of Michigan's African American population and 42% of the state's below poverty population. In SE Michigan, older African Americans have higher rates of poverty and comorbid medical diseases related to being underserved medically (5, 6). Our team of collaborating investigators and community partners will continue to build on our established partnerships. The effort will be led by the Karmanos Cancer Institute, the School of Medicine at Wayne State University, and the Josephine Ford Cancer Center of the Henry Ford Health System. Support for our CNP I and now CNP II is broadly based, demonstrated by the community leaders, researchers, clinicians and public officials with whom we have strong relationships and who have joined our Center Steering Committee and Community Advisory Group, and have written letters of support included in this application. We propose a community based participatory research (CBPR) approach to address three aims for reducing disparities:
Aim 1. To continue to increase knowledge, access and use of beneficial biomedical and behavioral procedures to reduce disparities related to breast, prostate, colorectal and lung cancer, among older, underserved African American adults in southeast Michigan;
Aim 2. To continue to develop and implement evidence-based intervention research to increase use of beneficial biomedical and behavioral procedures for cancer prevention, detection and treatment of older African Americans;
and Aim 3. To recruit and train a critical mass of promising and successful new researchers in CBPR to reduce cancer health disparities.
Older African Americans disproportionately experience higher rates of cancers, are first diagnosed at advanced stage disease, and suffer higher mortality rates. Our proposed CNP has high public health relevance because our goal is to continue our catalytic effort to sustain a strong community based health movement that will improve knowledge of, access to, and usage of beneficial behavioral and biomedical interventions to reduce cancer disparities and improve detection diagnosis treatment and survivorship
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