The overarching goal of the New Mexico MU-NCORP is to improve the quality of cancer care throughout our catchment area (the State of New Mexico) and to eliminate the tremendous burden of cancer health disparities in the multiethnic populations that we serve by building innovative statewide outreach programs, founded in community-based participatory research methods and scientific collaborations between community health systems and providers with the primary academic affiliate site, resulting in an increased awareness, acceptance, access, and participation by all New Mexicans in NCI-sponsored cancer screening, post-treatment surveillance, prevention, and therapeutic clinical trials. The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer (UNMCCC) serves as the primary affiliate with strong scientific programs in cancer population sciences, cancer control, health disparities, and clinical interventions, in partnership with nearly all New Mexico health systems and community cancer care sites that are consortium members of the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance (NMCCA, secondary affiliate), a joint 501c3 statewide clinical trials research network that provides the major clinical trials infrastructure to support the goals of the NCI NCORP. This NM MU-NCORP organization continues to engage all stakeholders in our cancer health mission and builds upon a well-established 20 year partnership supported in part by prior NCI MB-CCOP and current NCORP grants. This consortium has a proven track record and success in enrolling New Mexico's highly diverse multiethnic, rural, and underserved cancer patients in NCTN trials and has launched several cancer care delivery (CCDR) trials that are of great interest to our community partners. The NM MU-NCORP will continue to be actively engaged in developing research strategies across the NCORP Research Bases and will serve as working partners throughout the NCORP Network. With the highest percentage of Hispanics and American Indians of any state, New Mexico's 2.1 million citizens are 39% non- Hispanic White, 47% Hispanic, 10% American Indian, 2.4% Black, and 1.6% Asian and other ethnic minorities. New Mexico ranks at the bottom (48th) in the U.S. in annual per capita income and a substantial number of New Mexicans, particularly its minority populations, are poor, rural, and underserved. With the nation's highest rate (30%) of childhood poverty, nearly 20% of all New Mexicans live in poverty and 10-13% of New Mexicans, depending on the county, still lack health insurance. Our research strategy is focused on academic/community team partnerships to address all aspects of cancer screening, prevention, cancer control, cancer care delivery, and therapeutic intervention in order to prioritize and optimize trial-based cancer care, while enhancing collaboration with the NCORP Research Bases in order to generate the next generation of trials to address the cancer disparities of the New Mexicans served by the MU-NCORP.
The relevance of the New Mexico Minority-Underserved NCORP (MU-NCORP) lies in the deep rooted mission of our longstanding partnership of academic and community cancer providers and other community stakeholders managed through a unique statewide consortium infrastructure (UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center and the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance) to deliver the highest quality in all aspects of cancer care (cancer screening, prevention control and cancer care delivery) to all New Mexicans with a strong focus on eradicating disparities in access, care delivery and outcomes. Our growth as an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center with scientific programmatic focus on innovative approaches to cancer delivery and disparities research in our unique New Mexican populations in conjunction with our longstanding community partnerships through nearly 20 years of work as an MB-CCOP and now MU-NCOORP continues to support our progress in meaningful reduction in cancer burden and better understanding of barriers to care for our population. Continued team work with all academic, community oncology and tribal and other community stakeholders while serving as leaders within the NCI NCORP, CTEP and DCP with bidirectional research engagement will continue to strengthen our program and effectiveness in improving quality and length of life for New Mexicans and other minority populations.
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