The California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP) of the University of California and Commonweal (a nonprofit organization) propose an innovative project - Community-based Research Infrastructure to Better Science (CRIBS) - to stimulate community-based participatory research that addresses the environmental causes of and/or social disparities in breast cancer. Our vision is to create an infrastructure consisting of intensive training, technical assistance, and a web-supported learning community that will result in the conduct of community/academic collaborative research on the environmental causes of and social disparities in breast cancer, and the solutions that will reduce the suffering from breast cancer. CBCRP has more than a decade of experience funding community/academic partnerships to conduct community-based participatory research, but has yet to fully engage investigators and/or communities focused on environmental health or causes of disparities in health. Commonweal has a rich history of engaging community organizations in dialog about the science at the intersection of cancer and the environment, but has not yet targeted this work toward the conduct of research. The proposed project brings together the strengths of these two organizations to achieve the long-term goal transforming the research enterprise, the public's health, and health disparities experienced by traditionally vulnerable populations.
Specific aims are:
SPECIFIC AIM 1 : Form new collaborations between academic health center researchers and California community organizations to conduct research focused on environmental causes and/or social disparities in breast cancer.
SPECIFIC AIM 2 : Develop a sustained infrastructure to support community/academic collaborations through training and technical assistance.
SPECIFIC AIM 3 : Generate collaborative research projects that have the potential to transform our understanding of the environmental causes of and/or social disparities in breast cancer.
SPECIFIC AIM 4 : Build the capacity of the community/academic teams to develop and submit successful research proposals SPECIFIC AIM 5: Create an ongoing, web-supported community to support ongoing research interests and continual learning and infrastructure improvement.
It is estimated that up to 70 percent of breast cancer could have an environmental cause. Additionally disparities in breast cancer incidence, mortality, and outcomes are found in race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, class, and neighborhood.6 This infrastructure building program will focus on communities interested and involved in solving the questions related to environmental causes of and social disparities in breast cancer.
