Strong Community Interest in Conducting Breast Cancer Research Continues
Natalie Collins, M.S.W., Outreach and Technical Assistance Coordinator
Walter Price, Dr.P.H., CBCRP Community Initiatives Manager
In the Winter 2005 issue of the CBCRP Bulletin, we reported that a record number of concept papers were submitted for our Community Research Collaboration (CRC) awards beginning July 1, 2006. Concept papers are a pre-requisite to submitting a CRC application. Now that the application process has been completed, the outcome continues to be extremely encouraging. Community groups and their scientific partners not only submitted the largest number of applications in the ten years we have offered this award, but the scientific quality of these applications compared favorably with applications submitted by experienced scientists working under our highly competitive IDEA award type.
Of the 35 concept papers we received, 23 applicants—a record number—were sufficiently encouraged to send in an acceptable formal application. However, the excitement is not in the numbers alone; it is in the large number of very high quality applications that we were able to fund and in the wide range of population groups whose specific breast cancer issues will now be systematically addressed—issues that have been explored very little, or not at all, in these populations.
Our Awards Compendium summarizes all of our grants this year, but a few examples illustrate the divergent communities:
- Mary Anne Foo of the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, and Marjorie Kagawa-Singer of the University of California, Los Angeles, will examine how patient navigation programs can overcome health care barriers for Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese women.
- The team of Stephen Kaye, from the University of California, San Francisco, and Elsa Quezada from the Central Coast Center for Independent Living will look at increasing mammography among Latinas with disabilities.
- Linda Navarro from the Turtle Health Foundation, and Marlene von Friederichs-Fitzwater from the University of California, Davis, will address cultural and tribal issues in breast cancer among American Indian women by testing a multi-media intervention.
Other projects focus on women from other communities and interest groups, such as Slavic immigrants, Latinas with diabetes, older Thai women, Samoans, rural patients, and deaf and hard of hearing women.
In addition to the fully funded grants, the CBCRP awarded four $10,000 planning and development grants to support meritorious applications that needed strengthening before they could be considered strong candidates for funding. These projects focus on African American breast cancer survivors, the large sub-Asian population (Chinese, Filipino, Laotian) in California, Filipina breast cancer survivors, and women with low-English proficiency.
The CBCRP has taken major steps in the last several years to better serve the multi-ethnic populations in California by enabling community involvement in quality science on issues of concern to specific communities. Should the voters approve Proposition 86 this November, we will have the capacity to increase our outreach and support to community groups who, while they are intrigued by the idea of being involved in finding evidence-based answers to questions that concern them directly, have been hesitant to add a research mission to their ongoing service orientation. With additional technical assistance capacity, the CBCRP would be in a stronger position to assist these groups, and, in turn, fund a greater number of meritorious CRC applications addressing community concerns across California.
