The San Antonio Community Clinical Oncology Program (SACCOP) is a consortium, involving Santa Rosa Hospital and the Baptist Memorial Hospital System in San Antonio, Texas. These two institutions with 1354 beds are pooling their oncology patient base of 2000 new cases per year, 52% of which are diagnosed in minority groups (44% Hispanics, 8% Blacks), to establish the first COOP in Texas with the specific purpose of: a. increasing minority patient participation in cancer treatment research, b. introducing into the Hispanic community concepts of cancer research as a non-threatening approach to treatment of neoplastic diseases, c. involving primary care physicians in the overall cancer program by providing education in state-of-the-art therapies, d. establishing a network of primary care physicians who will be instrumental in implementing cancer control activities, e. generating a data base on Hispanic patients from which future cancer treatment and cancer control interventions appropriate for this segment of the U.S. population can be developed. The SACCOP will be a tight organization with centralized data management and defined committee structure. Ninety percent of research subjects will originate from within Bexar County. It is expected at least 50% of these will be of Mexican-American heritage. The majority of the cohesive group of investigators and the participating nursing staffs are fluent in Spanish. Furthermore, a Social Service Committee is being built into the operational plan to address specific minority related issues. Affiliations are in place with SWOG for treatment protocols and with M.D. Anderson for cancer control activities.
