(Applicant's narrative) The Southwest Oncology Group has evolved since its inception in 1956 into an adult multi-disease, multi-modality clinical research organization. This organization has grown to include 34 Full Member Institutions, 23 Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) institutions, including four Minority-Based CCOPs, 30 Urologic Cancer Outreach Program (UCOP) members, 26 High Priority program members and a network of approximately 927 Cooperative Group outreach Program (CGOP) investigators at 306 affiliate hospitals. In addition, 17 Group institutions also participate in the CTEP Minority Initiative program, which serves to enhance minority accrual in cancer clinical trials. More than 4,000 investigators, representing all research modalities, are members of the Group and actively participate in the registration of patients to cancer treatment and cancer control and prevention protocols. In addition, the Southwest Oncology Group coordinates the large intergroup chemoprevention trial funded by DCPC, the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT). Two hundred and thirty-two PCPT institutional sites affiliated with the Southwest Oncology Group and two other cooperative groups participate in this trial. The Southwest Oncology Group is also committed to representative accrual of women and minority patients and subjects to Group clinical trials. To this end, the Group has developed an extremely active Committee on Women's Health, which serves to evaluate and enhance the accrual of women to Group trials, identify and address special concerns regarding women's health issues in the cooperative group setting, and act as a direct liaison with women's health groups, such as the Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). In addition, minority accrual has been enhanced by the participation of the Minority-based CCOPs and other minority institutions, the Minority Research Subcommittee of the Cancer Control Research Committee, and numerous PCPT minority recruitment enhancement activities sponsored by the NCI and the Group. A new Group initiative involves the exploration of the role and feasibility of patient advocates and patient representatives under development include the utilization of patient advocate representatives in the development of proposed breast and lung cancer clinical trials, and possible distribution of Southwest Oncology Group clinical trials information materials to """"""""hot lines"""""""" sponsored by patient advocate groups for dissemination upon request by callers. The Southwest Oncology Group has continued to pursue the goals of the National Cancer Institute CCOP program through innovative membership, and unsurpassed excellence in patient accrual and quality-controlled research data from the CCOP affiliates.
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