Contact:
Suzanne Heurtin-Roberts, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Behavioral Research Program
Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences
301-594-6655
Email: sheurtin@mail.nih.gov

Objective of Project

As the research keystone of NCI’s Challenge to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, new Centers for Population Health and Cancer (CPHC) will provide support for the interdisciplinary approach to research needed to reduce the unequal burden of cancer and help achieve the goal of making cancer an uncommon disease that can be easily treated.

The objective of this RFA is to provide a stimulus for a new interdisciplinary and integrated research approach aimed at achieving a better understanding of social factors in cancer and how they interact with behavioral and biologic pathways.

Description of Project

This initiative provides a strategy for cancer control research in populations that integrates the biological, behavioral and social sciences within a framework directed to understanding how cancer “works” while linking levels of analysis from the societal to the genetic. Research areas to be included are Behavior and Social Gradients, Methodologic Issues, Health Care System, Sociobiological Mechanisms and Intervention Research.

Centers will be supported with the NIH specialized center grant mechanism (P50) to create the following research environment:

1. Centers will bring together the skills of basic, clinical, and cancer control scientists with other population scientists, such as sociologists, anthropologists, economists, behavioral and political scientists. The Centers will be required to provide structure and opportunities for the face-to-face interactions of investigators from these various disciplines in regular seminars, workgroups, and other similar interactions.
2. Centers require at least three research projects that focus on any of the research areas outlined above. In addition, CPHC will be asked to describe a plan for the promotion and support of interdisciplinary planning, implementation and synthesis of research across and within individual projects.
3. Centers will support pilot or developmental research projects and shared resources needed to attract investigators to working within interdisciplinary research teams.
4. Career development is a key component of the Centers. Funding will be available for junior investigators and resources will be dedicated to career development for junior investigators.

Centers must identify strategies to foster both formal and informal collaborations within and among Centers to describe and address overarching scientific and methodological issues.