Research and Methods Core

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Research and Methods Core: Project Summary The focus of our proposed UPSTREAM Research Center is examining the impacts of income intervention programs for reducing the long-term burden of cancer in persistent poverty areas. Our proposal to achieve this is through a scientific and collaborative process that prioritizes both the overlapping and also distinct needs of the Latino and Vietnamese communities in the persistent poverty areas of Santa Clara County and Yolo County, CA. The rationale for this approach is that there is robust evidence supporting a fundamental causes approach to cancer prevention – that is, only through intervening on the “causes of the causes” will we make substantial progress in reducing the cancer burden in persistent poverty areas. We cannot rely solely on individual or group behavioral change interventions alone for population reductions in the cancer burden; we must move ‘upstream’. The Research & Methods Core will support this mission through: Aim 1. Coordinating data collection, measures and methods and ensuring the interoperability of both quantitative and qualitative data within the Center and between Centers, Aim 2. Modeling the long-term effects of the project interventions and other exposures on colorectal cancer incidence, Aim 3. Coordinating with the projects and Cores to create data dashboards and insights with the persistent poverty communities in ways that will most benefit community led actions in cancer prevention, Aim 4. Evaluating the Center’s research productivity and impact over the funding period. The Research and Methods Core will address the needs of the Research projects by coordinating the collection of similar measures across research projects to enable inference as to the relative value of different income intervention programs, working with project investigators to coordinate methodological approaches for inference, and coordinating with project investigators to use estimates from their analytic data based models for inputs to a mathematical model that will predict population level changes in colorectal cancer incidence in persistent poverty areas. Across all of the above processes, the Research & Methods Core will evaluate the Center’s research productivity and impact over the funding period as part of the leadership team aims outlined in the Administrative Core. The mission of the Research and Methods Core is driven by two intertwining areas of intended impact – 1) robust and reproducible scientific discovery on the impact of income interventions on preventing cancer in persistent poverty areas in combination with 2) building capacity for cancer prevention research in those areas. Our team sees these as inseparable objectives. Despite the compelling evidence for the impact of addressing social determinants of health as fundamental causes of disease, less of this work has been based on actual interventions and actions, and even less of this work in relation to cancer incidence. To build capacity for prevention in persistent poverty areas, this scientific research needs to be co-produced with these communities in order to have the greatest impact, and the Research & Methods Core will play a part in this mission of our Center.