Community Outreach & Engagement Highlights
Citizen scientists (This image was taken prior to national guidelines of face coverings and physical distancing.)
In the past year, the Community Outreach & Engagement office combined evidence, expertise and engagement to push forward five key initiatives:
- EXPANDING COE REACH IN CATCHMENT AREA with a new satellite office in the Big Bend/Tallahassee area and hiring a new Community Health Resource Coordinator in partnership with Bond Community Health Center.
- BUILDING CAPACITY FOR RESEARCH THAT IS RELEVANT TO OUR CATCHMENT AREA by engaging with program leaders and creating new tools for them to design research that meets the needs of our communities. We have also pivoted and adapted to the pandemic by engaging with almost 800 community members about topics related to COVID-19 and cancer through educational webinars.
- WORKING TOWARD EQUITY IN CANCER CLINICAL TRIALS by completing a formal evaluation of n=70 interventional trials that have come before the SRMC board and through the creation of a novel data dashboard to track trial demographics
- ADDRESSING SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH by facilitating evidence-based interventions among underrepresented groups that link people to health care and to vital community resources.
- All of this is accomplished through our GROWING NETWORK OF STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS with the Cancer Center Community Advisory Board, HealthStreet, the CARE2 U54, Citizen Scientists, IFAS County Extension, and others.
Catchment Area Profile Report
Seminole Indian Reservation Extension agent Aaron Stam (center, blue) walking with 4H youth on horseback. (This image was taken prior to national guidelines of face coverings and physical distancing.)
In the Catchment Area Profile Report, the UFHCC COE team summarized our catchment area characteristics and priorities, cancer incidence, mortality and advanced stage diagnoses with an aim to build capacity for research that is relevant to our catchment area. This work also included the creation of an online, searchable data dashboard known as PORTRAIT: Partnerships to Optimize and Transform Research through Action and Impact Together, a tool for health system leaders and researchers to design research that meets the needs of our communities and thereby support the UFHCC in reducing the cancer burden across the cancer care continuum.
Working Toward Equity in Cancer Clinical Trials
UF Health Eastside Clinic (This image was taken prior to national guidelines of face coverings and physical distancing.)
The research at UF aims to address the complex needs of the catchment area to reduce the cancer burden and increase health equity. Therefore, the Office of Community Outreach and Engagement has partnered closely with Disease Site Group (DSG) leadership in the development of the catchment area rubric which articulates the relevancy of all cancer clinical trials to the catchment area. Over the past year, the COE team completed a formal evaluation of n=90 interventional trials that have come before the Scientific Review and Monitoring Committee. In addition to reviewing all interventional cancer clinical trials, the UFHCC and COE office, in collaboration with the Cancer Informatics Shared Resource (CI SR), have developed a novel data dashboard to assess trial feasibility and recruitment and enrollment progress with a focus on those traditionally underrepresented in cancer clinical trials.
Community Outreach & Engagement Seminars
Prior to and during the pandemic the COE team continued working to provide cancer related education important to our catchment area residents, providers and researchers. At the start of the year, Robin Yabroff, Ph.D., Senior Scientific Director of Health Services Research at the American Cancer Society, presented “Medical Financial Hardship Among Cancer Survivors in the United States” for a COE seminar to over 50 live and virtual attendees.
In mid-2019 the UFHCC COE office began managing the Cancer Connections monthly meetings originally founded 10 years ago by cancer survivor Barb Thomas. The presentations disseminate leading-edge cancer research, with a goal of having the community to gain a deeper awareness of current research, treatments options and health care services that are available to them. While Cancer Connections moved online only by March due to the pandemic, the monthly meetings continued with presentations from several UF/UF Health faculty and staff and almost 400 attendees for 2020.
