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A video premiere watch party was an opportunity for the community and focus group members to see the results of an Illinois Cancer Health Research (I-CHER) Center project that brings awareness to clinical trial participation for Black women diagnosed with breast cancer.

About  30 attendees celebrated and engaged in meaningful conversation about the video, which was part of the Fostering Opportunities in Research through Messaging and Education (FOR ME) project.

FOR ME is one of the projects supported through a Research Scholar Grant from the I-CHER Center, a solutions-oriented consortium of healthcare researchers and clinicians charged with improving outcomes in communities disproportionately affected by cancer.

The I-CHER Center sits within the University of Illinois Cancer Center at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and it was made possible by funding from the American Cancer Society and support from the Cancer Center. The Cancer Center is part of UIC's academic health enterprise, UI Health.

Over the past four years, the community organizations Sisters Working It Out (SWIO) and Equal Hope partnered with FOR ME co-investigators Kent Hoskins, MD, Ryan Nguyen, DO, and Leslie Carnahan, PhD, from the Cancer Center, and Vida Henderson, PhD, PharmD, MPH, MFA, the Chief of Population Health Research and Evaluation at the UI Health Mile Square Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center with a network of clinics in Chicago and Rockford. Hoskins and Nguyen are both practicing oncologists at UI Health.

The video tells the story of a woman as she decides to participate in a clinical trial. Although the story is fictional, it was inspired by 65 interviews with Black breast cancer survivors, patient advocates, oncologists and clinical trial staff. The video also includes the stories of two actual patients who were diagnosed with breast cancer and participated in clinical trials.

SWIO hosted the video screening in February.