?Community Outreach and Engagement The SJCCC is committed to the community we serve and addressing its clinical and research needs through education, thoughtful scientific research, community engagement and advocacy, and facilitation of access to care. Our efforts in the community are led by Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, the SJCCC Associate Director for Outreach. The SJCCC catchment area is defined as the geographic area around Memphis and each of our 8 affiliate sites in census-tract radii. Based on the 2010 United States census data, this area represents 6,633,683 persons aged 0?19 years, with an ethnic and racial distribution of 69% White, 21% Non-Hispanic Black/African American, and 8% Hispanic. The diverse population in our catchment area includes a large proportion of low- income groups with limited resources who are medically underserved. St. Jude's 56-year-old founding policy, to which we continue to rigorously adhere, is that no patient be denied treatment based on race, ethnicity, religion, or a family's inability to pay. The SJCCC is committed to addressing treatment disparities by making resources readily available to offset not only the cost of treatment but also that of transportation and housing during clinic visits and treatment. As the only NCI-designated Cancer Center focused exclusively on children, our outreach area is further expanded beyond our local community; we also serve as a national and international referral center for pediatric cancer. There is no known variation in childhood cancer incidence and outcomes by geographic region in the United States, and relatively few discrepancies have been identified that disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minorities. Thus, our SJCCC outreach efforts continue to investigate disparities, provide cancer education for children and their parents, advocate at the state and federal level, promote the implementation of health polices relevant to our population (e.g., HPV vaccination), address the needs of an ever-growing population of childhood cancer survivors, and conduct innovative research in these areas. We will also enhance provision of implementation tools locally through our Affiliates, nationally through St. Jude?led collaborative multisite studies, and globally through capacity building and advancement of knowledge to improve the level and quality of pediatric oncology care around the world.
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