Minority Pre-doctoral Education to Reduce Disparities

描述（由申请人提供）：NCI的癌症研究计划和优先事项将新癌症科学家的培训确定为其“最重要的挑战”之一，并强调需要更多的种族和少数民族参与癌症研究事业。增加少数民族对研究事业的参与也是公共卫生的一个主要优先事项，这是一个跨学科领域，对癌症预防和控制的贡献很大，而且在很大程度上是独特的。由于更加多样化的公共卫生工作人员可以更好地了解和服务于不同社区的需求，因此需要训练有素的少数民族公共卫生研究人员，以确保在消除健康和癌症差异方面取得进展。我们提出了一个为期两年的博士预科教育项目，培养非裔美国人公共卫生研究生，通过癌症预防和控制研究来帮助消除癌症差异。该计划由五个主要元素组成。针对学生：(1)了解和消除癌症差异的特殊课程；(2)癌症防治研究与政策的指导体验式学习；(3)指导自主研究；(4)与一个由非裔美国学者组成的跨学科小组建立专业网络，这些学者来自于研究癌症和/或差异的国家研究人员库。(5)跨文化指导的技能培养。为了加强其他机构今后对该方案的采用，这些方案组成部分的设计将用于传播，提案确定具体的产品和分发机制。圣路易斯大学公共卫生学院和研究生院坚定地致力于这个项目，并承诺为参与其中的学生提供85%的学费奖学金。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NCI's Plans and Priorities for Cancer Research identifies training of new cancer scientists as one of its "most important challenges," and emphasizes the need for increased involvement of racial and ethnic minorities in cancer research careers. Increasing minority participation in research careers has also been a major priority in public health, an interdisciplinary field whose contributions to cancer prevention and control have been significant, and largely unique. Because a more diverse public health work force can better understand and serve the needs of diverse communities, well-trained minority public health researchers are needed to ensure improvements are made in eliminating health and cancer disparities. We propose a two-year pre-doctoral education program to prepare African American graduate students in public health to help eliminate cancer disparities through cancer prevention and control research. The program consists of five main elements. For students: (1) special coursework in understanding and eliminating cancer disparities; (2) mentored experiential learning in cancer prevention and control research and policy; (3) mentored independent research; and, (4) professional network-building with an interdisciplinary group of African American scholars from a national pool of researchers whose work addresses cancer and/or disparities. For faculty: (5) skill building in cross-cultural mentoring. To enhance future adoption of the program by other institutions, these program components will be designed for dissemination and the proposal identifies specific products and mechanisms for distribution. The School of Public Health and Graduate School at Saint Louis University are strongly committed to this program, and have pledged 85% tuition scholarships for students involved.