The National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer (NBLIC), a ten (10) year old community awareness program, was initiated by the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to increase cancer awareness among African Americans. This proposal is to support the National Black Leadership-Cancer Control, Research and Training Network (NBL-CCRTN), an expansion of NBLIC. Conducted over a five-year period in three phases, NBL-CCRTN's broad objectives include establishment of a national network of African American cancer control experts and expert researchers, clinicians; implementation of capacity-building strategies within community-based coalitions; establishment academic and clinical partnerships and development of relevant collaborative research projects. The NBLIC target areas will be streamlined to include densely populated African American, high prevalence cancer communities. Outreach, education and training efforts will focus on cancers disproportionately impacting African Americans (i.e., breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate) and will be targeted in best practices to be implemented through seminars, lectures, health fairs and other community outreach efforts. Collaborations with national agencies concerned with cancer control will be enhanced for this delivery. Important to the success of NBL-CCRTN are links to NCI-designated cancer centers, cancer cooperative groups and other health care providers. This project also calls for the establishment of partnerships with major cancer care providers in the country in an effort to increase African-American accrual to treatment and prevention protocols. The need to recruit and train more black health care professionals is a major aim of the project. Pilot investigations will be implemented during the final phase of the project by NBL-CCRTN researchers. Process and outcome evaluations, being conducted for NBLIC, will be enhanced and implemented for NBL-CCRTN. A National Office will serve as the Coordinating Center for Regional and Coalition activities, with oversight provided by a Steering Committee of project leadership and cancer control experts.

U01CA086274

2000-04-04

2006-03-31