Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) has been an integral component of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center (DLDCCC) since its inception in 2007 when the Office of Outreach and Health Disparities (OOHD) was established. Its main activity is to ensure that the diverse and medically underserved populations of the DLDCCC?s catchment area benefit from innovative outreach, education, screening, and primary prevention strategies. The OOHD has grown in scope and is charged with disseminating and implementing evidence-based interventions into practice, with over $10 million in grant funding from NCI, NIH, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The DLDCCC?s COE is led by the OOHD, which leverages over a decade of working with academic and community partners to promote cancer awareness and prevention in the catchment area, with particular focus on medically underserved and racial/ethnic minority populations. The COE serves as a driver for the translation of research from the Research Programs and Disease Working Groups into practice in the catchment area. The COE leads the characterization of the catchment area to define the cancer burden and identify efforts to address cancer disparities. Through expanded partnerships with CHI St. Luke?s and continued partnerships with Texas Children?s Hospital, the catchment area of the DLDCCC was recently expanded to include communities of the Houston, Texas Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), representing a diverse population of more than 7 million individuals. In our catchment area we have identified triple negative breast, prostate in African Americans, lung, colorectal, liver, cervix, HPV- and HIV-associated malignancies, and pediatric cancers as major cancer burdens and/or cancers that disproportionally affect our catchment area population. Obesity and underutilization of cancer screening were identified as risk factors. Over the next 5 years, the COE will: (1) Continuously monitor the cancer burden and risk factors in the DLDCCC catchment area and promote the engagement of research programs to address the cancer burden and disparities in the catchment area; (2) Engage the DLDCCC catchment area populations in cancer prevention, control, survivorship outreach, education, and research to reduce cancer burden and disparities in the catchment area; and (3) Disseminate and promote integration of evidence-based interventions and findings from research DLDCCC programs, locally (e.g., in our catchment area), regionally, nationally, and globally through outreach, collaboration, and policy. This work will be accomplished with guidance from our Community Advisory Board and in close collaboration with DLDCCC Programs. It will leverage the COE?s strong expertise in developing patient- centered educational resource, methods to address cancer disparities, and implementing and disseminating multi-pronged, evidence-based interventions into practice.
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