Cancer Research Expanded In Indian Country
ROCHESTER, MN — Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has received a $6 million five-year Community Networks Program Center grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to further develop its cancer health disparities outreach within American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities.
Mayo Clinic has a 30-year history of working within these communities to help improve health outcomes, recognizing that they suffer from high incidence rates and poor survival rates for most cancers.
Founded in 2000 as one of 18 NCI-funded special populations networks to support culturally- appropriate cancer control activities, Mayo Clinic's Spirit of E.A.G.L.E.S. program created a national consortium of approximately 200 members, including AI/AN community representatives and students, cancer advocacy groups and academic cancer centers. Expanding on this foundation, the new Spirit of E.A.G.L.E.S. Community Network Program will continue this collaboration, focusing now on comprehensive cancer control, including translational research, clinical trials and continued community-based participatory research.
Specifically, this funding will enable clinical research studies to be conducted in Alaska and Wisconsin, as well as help formalize the Hampton Faculty Fellows Program to mentor the next generation of Native American cancer control researchers.
As one of only two American Indian medical oncologists in the country, Mayo Clinic's Native American Programs director Judith Kaur, M.D., is uniquely positioned to lead this program.
"This grant will enable us to build upon the important community outreach and research that we have been dedicated to over the past three decades," says Dr. Kaur, who works with a multidisciplinary team of Mayo colleagues dedicated to disparities outreach. "The program has been gaining momentum, especially the many important relationships we've established within these communities. We're looking forward to expanding our crucial work to help educate and subsequently save lives."
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers, and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has campuses in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.; and community-based providers in more than 70 locations in southern Minnesota., western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year.
