African American men experience a 60% higher incidence of prostate cancer and are more than twice as likely to die from it than White men. Evidence is insufficient to conclude that definitively screening for prostate cancer reduces the likelihood of morbidity or death. Patients are encouraged to discuss screening alternatives with health care providers for informed decision-making (IDM). The extent of IDM in clinical or community setting is not known. This study uses data from a community-based, computer-mediated, IDM intervention that targeted 152 African American aged 40 to 70. Pretest-posttest differences in means for prostate cancer knowledge, screening decisional conflict, and screening decisional self-efficacy were examined by two-tailed t-tests. Overall, the intervention significantly improved respondents’ prostate cancer knowledge (p<.0001), significantly improved decisional self-efficacy (p<.0001) and significantly reduced decisional conflict (p<.0001). Specifically, the intervention significantly promoted IDM among men who reported more education, being married, having financial resources, and younger age.

In Tampa, Florida, researchers have partnered with community- and faith-based organizations to create the Comparative Effectiveness Research for Eliminating Disparities (CERED) infrastructure. Grounded in community-based participatory research, CERED acts on multiple levels of society to enhance informed decision making (IDM) of prostate cancer screening among Black men. CERED investigators combined both comparative effectiveness research and community-based participatory research to design a trial examining the effectiveness of community health workers and a digitally enhanced patient decision aid to support IDM in community settings as compared with “usual care” for prostate cancer screening. In addition, CERED researchers synthesized evidence through the development of systematic literature reviews analyzing the effectiveness of community health workers in changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of African American adults toward cancer prevention and education. An additional systematic review analyzed chemoprevention agents for prostate cancer as an emerging technique. Both of these reviews, and the comparative effectiveness trial supporting the IDM process, add to CERED’s goal of providing evidence to eliminate cancer health disparities.

The National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities has created pilot training opportunities under the “Continuing Umbrella of Research Experiences” (CURE) program that focus on emerging technologies (ET). In this pilot project, an eighteen month cancer biology research internship was reinforced with: instruction in an emerging technology (proteomics), a transition from the undergraduate laboratory to a research setting, education in cancer health disparities, and community outreach activities. A major goal was to provide underrepresented undergraduates with hands-on research experiences that are rarely encountered at the undergraduate level, including mentoring, research presentations, and participation in local and national meetings. These opportunities provided education and career development for the undergraduates, and they have given each student the opportunity to transition from learning to sharing their knowledge and from being mentored to mentoring others. Here, we present the concepts, curriculum, infrastructure, and challenges for this training program along with evaluations by both the students and their mentors.

No abstract

Over one in three cancer-related deaths are associated with tobacco use. Although the overall incidence trend of tobacco-related cancers (TRCs) has been decreasing in the past a few decades, evidence suggests that not all TRCs have decreasing incidence and there exists gender and racial disparities in the TRC trends. Prior studies of TRC incidence have used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) database. However, the SEER database includes limited information regarding the United States southeastern region and has been shown not to be representative of the US. In this study, we analyzed TRC incidence trends from 2010 to 2013 using the Florida cancer registry data, collected from a large ethno-racially diverse state. We computed annual age-adjusted incidence rates and annual percentage change (APC) to characterized the incidence trends of the following cancers: oral cavity, cervical, respiratory (lung, bronchitis, and larynx), urinary (bladder, kidney, and renal pelvis), digestive (esophagus, stomach, and pancreas), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and pharyngeal. All incidence trends were also evaluated stratifying by gender (men and women) and race (Non-Hispanic (NH) Whites, NH Blacks, and Hispanics). Overall, all TRCs had a significant decrease in age-adjusted incidence rates for the study period, except for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and pharyngeal cancer for which the incidence remained unchanged. Oral cavity cancer had the biggest decline in age-adjusted incidence rates (APC= −2.5; 95% CI= −3.4, −1.6), while cancers of the digestive system had the smallest decline in incidence rates (APC= −0.6; 95% CI= −1.0, −0.2). When broken down by gender, males have a greater decrease in incidence rates than women for urinary and respiratory cancers. In addition, while pharyngeal cancer incidence rate stayed unchanged overall, there was a significant increase in the rate among male (APC= 1.0; 95% CI= 0.3, 1.7), but not female. When broken down by race and ethnic groups, NH Blacks and Hispanics had greater decline in cancer incidence for cervical cancer, oral cavity cancer, and respiratory cancer. For pharyngeal cancer, there was a significant decrease in incidence among NH Blacks (APC= −3.7; 95% CI= −5.5, −1.9), while the incidence significantly increased among NH Whites (APC= 1.6; 95% CI= 0.7, 2.5). In summary, there was an overall decreasing trend of TRC incidence. However, increasing incidence of pharyngeal cancer was observed for male and NH Whites. Citation Format: Danyell S. Wilson, Alice Parish, Yi Guo. Gender and racial disparities in incidence trends of tobacco-related cancers from 2010 to 2013 [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-175. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-LB-175