Below you will find a range of cancer disparities related links and resources. If you have additional suggestions, please send us an email.
Community Outreach Tools
As part of the Initiative to Eliminate Cancer Disparities' Community Engagement Committee activities, various resources have been created to use in community outreach around cancer. You may browse these resources here. If you are interested in using any of them in your community outreach efforts, please contact Elizabeth Zdunich.
DF/HCC Affiliated Research Efforts
Guidelines & Recommendations for Recruiting Diverse Populations to Clinical and Community Research Trials - Resource document developed by the IECD to increase minority recruitment to trials.
Center for Community Based Research (at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute)– Developing innovative ways to lower cancer risk by working with community groups and organizations. The center uses the power of the community to study the factors that play a role in improving the prevention, early detection, and treatment of cancer.
Division of Public Health Practice (at the Harvard School of Public Health) – The Division strives to strengthen service, education and research opportunities to the School's students, faculty and practitioners.
FXB Center for Health and Human Rights (at the Harvard School of Public Health) – The first academic center to focus exclusively on health and human rights. The Center combines the academic strengths of research and teaching with a strong commitment to service and policy development.
Civil Rights Project (at Harvard University) – Renewing the civil rights movement by bridging the worlds of ideas and action, and by becoming a preeminent source of intellectual capital and a forum for building consensus within that movement.
BET Cancer Prevention Center - A unique collaboration between the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention and Black Entertainment Television (BET) Interactive aimed at reaching African-Americans with cancer prevention messaging via one of the largest African-American websites.
Boston and Massachusetts Resources
ACE Environmental Justice – ACE builds the power of communities of color and lower income communities to eradicate environmental racism and classism and achieve environmental justice.
Institute on Urban Health Research - The IUHR was founded in response to serious and largely unmitigated disparities in the level of overall health and health care found in urban populations, particularly those of the urban poor, African-American and Latino communities.
Reach 2010 Commission – The mission of Boston's REACH 2010 Coalition is to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in breast and cervical cancer by creating, with the community, a culturally competent system which promotes screening, education, prevention, treatment, and access to care for Black women and women of African descent in Boston.
Boston Disparities Report – A presentation and analysis of health disparities in Boston produced by the Boston Public Health Commission in June 2005.
Massachusetts Cancer Registry – The MCR is responsible for the collection of information regarding all newly diagnosed cases of cancer in Massachusetts. These data provide crucial information for monitoring the impact of environmental and occupational hazards, as well as for designing and evaluating cancer prevention and control programs.
Race/Ethnicity Reports – A resource provided by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
MassCHIP – A dynamic, user-friendly information service that provides free, online access to these and many other health and social indicators. With MassCHIP, you can obtain community-level data to assess health needs, monitor health status indicators, and evaluate health programs.
Boston Public Health Commission - Health of Boston 2006 report -
This annual report has been prepared for readers who want an extensive yet readily usable source of Boston health data.
National Resources
Cancer Control Planet - This portal provides access to data and resources that can help planners, program staff, and researchers to design, implement and evaluate evidence-based cancer control programs.
Public Health Geo-coding Project - An introduction to geocoding and using area-based socioeconomic measures with public health surveillance data, based on the work of the Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health.
SEER - A program of the National Cancer Institute, SEER is a source of information on cancer incidence and survival in the United States.
NCI Health Disparities Surveillance Research – Resource for statistics by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status as well as reports on cancer in specific minority and underserved populations.
NCI Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences –Resource for funding opportunities, information and resources, current research in the areas of genetic, epidemiologic, behavioral, social, and surveillance cancer research.
Trans-HHS Cancer Health Disparities Progress Review Group – Established by HHS to bring together the nation's leading researchers, health practitioners and advocates as well as cancer survivors, to look at eliminating health disparities in the area of cancer.
CDC Office of Minority Health – Resource for CDC-based reports, publications, programming, and training opportunities.
CDC Community Guide – Provides public health decision makers with recommendations regarding population-based interventions to promote health and to prevent disease, injury, disability, and premature death, appropriate for use by communities and health care systems.
Healthy People 2010 – A framework for prevention for the Nation. It is a statement of national health objectives designed to identify the most significant preventable threats to health and to establish national goals to reduce these threats.
IOM Unequal Treatment – IOM assessment of the extent of disparities in the types and quality of health services received by U.S. racial and ethnic minorities and non-minorities; exploration of factors that may contribute to inequities in care; and recommendations of policies and practices to eliminate these inequities.
National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship Minority Guide – Resource describing ways to develop and sustain minority survivorship programs, including presentation of model programs.
National Healthcare Disparities Report, 2005. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - AHRQ Rockville, MD - January 2006. The report presents the latest available findings on quality of and access to health care in the general U.S. population and among priority populations. It focuses on four components of quality: effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness & two components of access: facilitators and barriers to health care and health care utilization.
Intercultural Cancer Council Offers links, resources, and cancer facts sheets for various ethnic groups.
Cancer, Culture, and Literacy - Compilation of relevant resources from the Moffitt Cancer Center's Cancer Control Journal.
NCI’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD) Focusing on providing timely information on cancer health disparities research, training, and awareness efforts
NIH POLICY ON REPORTING RACE AND ETHNICITY DATA: SUBJECTS IN CLINICAL RESEARCH - This document provides additional guidance and instruction for using the revised minimum standards for maintaining, collecting, and presenting data on race and ethnicity found in the PHS 398 (rev. 5/01) and PHS 2590 (rev.5/01) instructions and forms http://grants.nih.gov/grants/forms.htm. Comparable information will be provided in research and development contract solicitations and awards for intramural projects. This document should be used in conjunction with the instructions in the PHS 398 and PHS 2590 instructions and forms. The 1997 OMB revised minimum standards include two ethnic categories (Hispanic or Latino, and Not Hispanic or Latino) and five racial categories (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White). The categories in this classification are social-political constructs and should not be interpreted as being anthropological in nature. Using self-reporting or self-identification to collect an individual’s data on ethnicity and race, investigators should use two separate questions with ethnicity information collected first followed by the option to select more than one racial designation. Collection of this information and use of these categories is required for research that meets the NIH definition of clinical research. EFFECTIVE DATE: This policy applies to all new applications and proposals, annual progress reports, competing continuation applications, competing supplement applications for research grants, contracts, and intramural projects as of January 10, 2002.
Center To Reduce Cancer Health Disparities - The Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities is the keystone of NCI's efforts to reduce the unequal burden of cancer in our society. CRCHD E-Bulletin.
Health & Social Equity Resources
WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health – Committee created to begin the process to act upon the social and environmental causes of health inequities via advocating for political change.
International Society for Equity in Health – Promoting equity in health and health services internationally through education, research, publication, communication and charitable support.
Praxis Project – A national, nonprofit organization that builds partnerships with local groups to address the health gap facing communities of color.
PAHO Democracy and Health – Website devoted to issues relating health and democratic ideals.
Conducting Community Based Participatory Research
The November issue of the Journal of Urban Health has a special section of a number of articles on the challenges of conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR) and establishing and maintaining research partnerships.