University of Illinois Cancer Center leaders, staff, Community Advisory Board (CAB) members and community partners have published a collaborative study describing how the Cancer Center developed scalable approaches to determining scientific priorities that are rooted in health equity in concert with communities.
The study explains how the Cancer Center, at the urging of its CAB, defined “Special Geographies Areas” (SGA) – 20 zip codes within Cook County wherein the Cancer Center (as part of UI Health) or a partner safety net facility has a physical clinical presence – as communities that would benefit most from Cancer Center outreach, care and science. SGA residents face greater transportation challenges and adverse social determinants of health, and suffer a greater cancer burden relative to the nation.
The study, published in the journal Preventive Oncology and Epidemiology, also shares examples of how Cancer Center Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) data guided the identification of community-endorsed scientific priorities and how the Cancer Center incentivizes community-engaged research that is responsive to community needs.
Read the Study
The full study is linked here: “Characterizing the Catchment Area and Identifying Scientific Priorities with Communities: An Example from the University of Illinois Cancer Center.”
Study conclusions are excerpted below:
“The current study offered an example regarding the importance of engaging community in defining catchment areas, characterizing burdens, identifying special sub-geographies and populations within the catchment, and setting scientific priorities. Findings suggest the value of community-guided characterization of catchment burden and CHNA on priorities for different scientific methods and approaches. Indeed, these values have directly contributed to several emerging initiatives in our Cancer Center, which are responsive to catchment priorities and embed community in study design and implementation. Our processes and findings highlight that it is critical to engage with communities using bidirectional and assets-based approaches. These approaches and multidimensional engagements across community leaders and respondents can help to build authentic and trusted relationships, which can ultimately maximize the ability for the University of Illinois Cancer Center and other cancer centers to address health disparities within their catchment areas.”
A full list of study authors, with their affiliations linked, is below. Yamile Molina, PhD, Cancer Center Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement, is the first author and Margaret Wright, PhD, Cancer Center Senior Research Scientist and Co-Director of the Data Integration Shared Resource (DISR), is the senior and corresponding author.