Behavioral Oncology Education & Career Development

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is a competitive renewal application submitted in response to PAR-10-165 (NCI Cancer Education and Career Development Program). In accordance with the program announcement, we seek continued funding for the Moffitt Cancer Center Post- Doctoral Training Program in Behavioral Oncology, a program first funded in 2003 that trains postdoctoral candidates in cancer research settings that are highly interdisciplinary and collaborative. Specific aims are to: 1) continue the development and refinement of a curriculum-dependent post-doctoral training program in behavioral oncology research that draws upon the faculty and resources of the Moffitt Cancer Center and the University of South Florida; 2) recruit a diverse group of promising trainees who are committed to careers as researchers in behavioral oncology; and 3) provide these trainees with the knowledge, skills, opportunities, and mentoring needed to become successful independent investigators in behavioral oncology. The training program builds on extensive and productive collaborations among researchers with backgrounds in behavioral science, population science, health communications, nursing, and medicine. These researchers are all faculty at the University of South Florida and members of the Health Outcomes and Behavior Research Program at Moffitt Cancer Center, which was rated Exceptional at the Center's most recent NCI Cancer Center Support Grant renewal. A key feature of this program has been the development and refinement of a specialized curriculum in behavioral oncology not otherwise available at our institution that is linked in an essential manner to the program's training goals and objectives. A described in the application, this specialized curriculum consists of a core curriculum required for both first-year and second-year trainees and an elective curriculum, designed to provide individualized training, that is selected by each trainee in consultation with his/her training committee. Since the last competitive renewal, the program has continued to be successful in attracting a talented and diverse pool of applicants, recruiting the best applicants from this pool and providing the trainees recruited with the skills, experiences, and mentoring necessary for becoming successful independent investigators in the field of behavioral oncology.