The American Foundation, in collaboration with Harlem Hospital Center, Columbia University School of Social Work and Cornell University Medical College, propose a Program Project entitled """"""""Minority Cancer Prevention Research Unit (MCPRU)"""""""". This P01 has grown out of a long-standing collaborative relationship between the investigators representing the participating institutions and their recognized need for feasible and efficacious interventions designed to prevent avoidable cancer morbidity and mortality in minority populations. The primary overall objective of this research program is to develop and to test innovative intervention models for controlling the use of tobacco among Black Americans. This focus was carefully selected based on what is currently known regarding effective smoking prevention and cessation intervention methods as compared to other cancer risk factors, and the excess disease burden among Blacks that is known to be related directly to differences in smoking-related illness. Though this focus has been selected, what will be learned through the currently proposed research effort will have direct applicability for the development of interventions targeting other cancer risk factors and other minority populations. The five individual research projects that are proposed are highly multi-disciplinary efforts which overlap considerably in terms of intervention methods, evaluation strategies, and key personnel. Each is a model of the strong inter-institutional collaboration that forms the fundamental framework of the overall program. These projects include 1)an epidemiological analysis of sociodemographic predictors of smoking behavior and smoking-related illness among Blacks, 2) an intervention development project focusing on the delivery of smoking cessation interventions to Blacks in health care settings, 3) an intervention development project focusing on smoking cessation as part of community- based cancer control in inner city housing projects, 4) an intervention development project which will evaluate various game-oriented approaches to smoking prevention for Black adolescents, and 5) an intervention development project which will evaluate the efficacy of a school-based smoking prevention project for Black adolescents. These projects will be coordinated and administered through five common Core components. These components represent the specific areas of overlap which are common to the individual research projects. By separating out these functions as common core components, each individual project will have the technical benefit of the other four during its design and implementation. In addition, by sharing these core components as common resources, the overall costs of the program will be greatly reduced as compared to the cost of conducting the individual projects separately. These five core components are 1) the senior leadership core, 2) the intervention development core, 3) the information management core, 4) the scientific dissemination core, and 5) the community outreach core.
