University of Colorado Cancer Center Support Grant

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Abstract The UCCC is the only NCI-designated Cancer Center in Colorado and has as its catchment area the entire State of Colorado. There are conceptually two ‘Colorados’: the Front Range (including the Denver metropolitan area along with a string of suburban and urban areas from Ft. Collins in the north to Pueblo in the south); and rural Colorado, where 23.1% of the population lives. The state is racially and ethnically diverse with Hispanics comprising 21.8% of the population in 2019 and residing throughout the state, where 22.1% of the urban population and 11.6% of the rural population are Hispanic. Colorado’s most isolated rural areas are home to the poorest Hispanics in the State. Likewise, Colorado’s African American population (4% of the total) is disproportionately poor and lives in isolated rural and frontier counties. Our National Outreach Network’s (NON) Community Health Educators (CHE) [NON-CHE] project organizes and conduct activities to reach all Coloradans, but in particular rural, Hispanic, and poverty-stricken populations. Through the NON-CHE project, we focus on educating communities about the importance of participating in CT and preventing cancers associated with the HPV with HPV vaccines. We also implement culturally tailored outreach activities to enhance community members’ knowledge of, inquiry, and participation in locally available CT and HPV vaccinations. Our project focuses on identifying and referring community members to health care providers/institutions with available CT at affiliated institutions. For evaluation, we track the number of individuals referred to health care providers/institutions for CT participation with a 3-month post-referral follow-up to determine whether individuals accepted or declined CT participation and record reasons why individuals decided not to participate in a CT. Similarly, we conduct outreach to educate patients about the HPV vaccine and refer them to vaccination services in partnership with a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Denver, Colorado. For both of our CT and HPV vaccine initiatives, we have developed and disseminate culturally, linguistically (English and Spanish), and literacy appropriate information to increase knowledge and awareness of racially/ethnically diverse communities. We also focus on providing information about treatment services and engaging patients in medical decision-making tailored to the individual patient. (i.e., risk and genetic predisposition). Last, we also provide community presentations for great reach and engagement. With this supplement extension we plan to continue our initiative by partnering with a rural FQHC that serves counties with increased cancer disparities to educate parents of adolescents (aged 11-18) and young adults (aged 19-26) about the importance of the HPV vaccine and navigate eligible patients to obtain the HPV vaccine doses need to complete their recommended HPV vaccine schedules. In addition, we will include an entertainment-education (E-E) video for parents and young adults to engage them in an evidence-based intervention to affect the precursors (e.g., intentions) to adopting of the HPV vaccine.