Lung Cancer Disparities Center: Jointly Addressing Race & Socioeconomic Status

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Lung Cancer Disparities Center will be an interdisciplinary center for research (including community based participatory research), core support and dissemination activities focused on understanding and altering the determinants of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities along the continuum of lung cancer. Cigarette smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer and the key marker of high-risk in both individuals and populations; without cigarette smoking, lung cancer would be rare. Thus, identifying effective strategies to prevent the initiation of smoking and facilitate cessation among smokers is critical to reducing the risk of lung cancer. We also need to better understand the contribution of the social environment to the onset, course, and outcomes of lung cancer. The five projects and cores have the following specific aims: 1) develop and test novel tobacco control interventions that address the social context that initiate and sustain smoking behavior; 2) develop and apply sophisticated concepts, measures, and methods regarding community-focused research to all of the activities of Center; 3) draw on the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of researchers to bring a social determinants perspective to the clinical factors and other individual level factors that lead to social disparities in lung cancer survival and the genetic factors that could affect the onset, course and outcomes of lung cancer; 4) refine existing conceptual and methodological approaches to understanding and describing the joint contribution of race/ethnicity and SES to lung cancer; 5) develop a strong and cutting-edge training program to train the population health investigators of the future; and 6) fund highly innovative and high-risk pilot projects to inform research and application concerned with jointly understanding race/ethnicity and SES to disparities in lung cancer and its determinants. Significantly, this work will be accomplished by a transdisciplinary team of researchers who have made seminal contributions to population health and health disparities, in an institutional environment in which there is substantial intellectual and financial support for such an interdisciplinary Center. RELEVANCE: The Center on Lung Cancer Disparities will identify how environmental conditions - related to race/ethnicity and patterns of risk produce social disparities in lung cancer outcomes by influencing multiple pathways leading to poor health. Our Center focuses on one specific condition (lung cancer) and its key behavioral determinant (cigarette smoking). Cigarette smoking is the primary cause of lung cancer and the key marker of high-risk in both individuals and populations; without cigarette smoking, lung cancer would be rare.