Resource Spotlight: Community Outreach and Engagement

By Mary Beth Terry, PhD, and Kimberly Burke

The Community Outreach and Engagement Office (COE) at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) brings together a team of experienced researchers, clinicians and community health educators.

Our team works to understand the needs of the communities and patients served by the HICCC and remove access barriers to cancer prevention, screening, treatment and survivorship services.  Our mission is to reduce the burden of cancer and cancer disparities, specifically in the center’s catchment area by 1) monitoring the cancer burden in our catchment area 2) conducting outreach to ensure communities have access to evidence-based prevention and treatment services 3) facilitating community based research approaches and 4) engaging communities to support and implement community educational research and policy initiatives.

Focusing on the five New York City boroughs, Westchester and Rockland Counties in New York, and Bergen County in New Jersey, the cancer center’s catchment area, a richly diverse population across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The greatest cancer disparities include higher incidence rates of breast, prostate and liver in most of the catchment area and higher mortality rates of breast, prostate, and liver in the Bronx, Central Harlem, and Washington Heights and Inwood. We are working with HICCC leadership, investigators and community partners to develop research and outreach projects to address these disparities.

Working with community partners and stakeholders, our office develops community- and family-based outreach and research specifically to accelerate cancer prevention within the diverse communities HICCC serves. Some of our key programs focus on tobacco cessation, promoting HPV vaccination, and educating community members about lifestyle changes and increasing physical activity. During the last five years, COE programming, in partnership with Manhattan Screening Services, has connected thousands of individuals to cancer screening services.

We also conduct and support community-based research. Over the last five years, COE has enrolled over 8,200 individuals in the catchment area into 31 separate studies, and facilitated minority enrollment into clinical trials, a key health disparity that persists today. As a team of multilingual and multicultural staff with over 20 years of experience, we provide a number of services that support community-based research.

Our team can help with study design for community-based research and recruitment and retention, particularly with engaging members of our community and/or minority groups. We also work with researchers to develop culturally appropriate study materials and translate existing materials into the languages of our community members. One of our faculty, Rachel Shelton, provides additional training in implementation science, methods that promote adopting evidence-based programs, practices, guidelines, and interventions into healthcare and public health practices.

The COE is working with community partners and investigators to plan webinars for community members to learn about research that is most relevant to them. Additionally, the COE is working with the five other NCI designated cancer centers in NYC to host NYC No Tobacco Week (May 29th – June 5th), a week long effort throughout New York City to prevent smoking and to encourage people to access the resources they need to quit smoking. As part of this event, COE will be launching a series of short videos in multiple languages and webinars through social media and on the event website. More information to follow.