Research and Education Partnership between NC A&T and the Wake Forest Univ. CCC

Partnership Abstract

The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) and the Lombardi Cancer Center (LCC) partnership establish a planning U56 funded Partnership that build upon their successes in a funded P20 Partnership. The U56 Partnership will focus exclusively on Cancer Prevention and Control. This is a highly relevant focus for the District of Columbia (DC), which has one of the highest cancer death rates in the nation. The specific aims are: (1) to establish a Planning and Evaluation Core that will identify priorities, evaluate progress and determine success; (2) to establish a Developmental Core that will begin with 4 pilot projects and new faculty recruits and; (3) to establish a LCC and UDC jointly taught UDC masters program in Cancer Biology, Prevention and Control. The goal of this partnership is to allow the investigators to develop mutually beneficial collaborations worthy of new peer-reviewed funding. Thus, this U56 partnership is focused on obtaining pilot data that will allow testing future hypotheses. The pilot projects span the range of cancer control.

We also will establish a jointly conducted masters program in Cancer Biology, Prevention and Control, emphasizing the need for basis sciences and cancer control for more effective cancer control research, and stimulating minority students to pursue research careers. This U56 Partnership is feasible and the outcomes are achievable because with the P20 funding we have found that our faculty can work together on both research and teaching projects. We have identified that the strengths and limitations of each institution are most complementary in the area of cancer prevention and control.