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  • The Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnership Program: The NCI Perspective
  • H. Nelson Aguila, DVM , Peter O. Ogunbiyi, DVM, PhD , and Sanya S. Springfield, PhD (bio)

Disparities in cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality in racial and ethnic minority populations and among the socio-economically disadvantaged have continued to rise over several decades. For example, Hispanic and Vietnamese women have disproportionate rates of cervical cancer, which they contract at twice the rate of White women.1 Multiple epidemiological studies have confirmed that prostate cancer occurs at a higher prevalence and with greater morbidity in African American men than in most other populations.2,3 Cancer mortality rates among Alaska Native men and women are significantly higher than U.S. White rates.4 Clearly, more research is needed to understand better and overcome these and other cancer health disparities in near future.

Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) enroll large numbers of students from racial and ethnic minority groups (e.g., African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders) and socio-economically disadvantaged populations that are underrepresented nationally in the biomedical sciences. These institutions offer high-quality educational programs that target minority and underserved students, who represent a rich source of talent with cultural knowledge and sensitivities that are important for research on cancer health disparities. However, MSIs have to overcome difficulties in developing and sustaining independent programs in biomedical research. One factor contributing to these difficulties is the small number of minority scientists successful in pursuing biomedical research careers. Despite various initiatives, progress has been slow in increasing the number of minority scientists who are competitive for National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants.5 More specifically, a substantial increase is needed in the number of well-trained minority and underserved scientists who can conduct independent cancer research. Cultural perspectives of such scientists are essential to conduct research properly and successfully on the [End Page 5] disproportionate burden of cancer in racial and ethnic minority and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. On the other hand, the NCI-designated Cancer Centers (CC) are geographically dispersed, research-intensive organizations with well-organized programs for training cancer scientists. Yet, the progress of Cancer Centers in focusing on research issues of particular importance to cancer in minorities, in training underrepresented minority scientists, in reaching out to and working with different racial and ethnic minority and underserved populations in their communities, and in bringing the benefits of cancer research to these populations has been slow.

Planning for the Minority Institution/Cancer Center Partnership (MI/CCP) started in 1999. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) provided diversity research supplements to existing NCI-funded grants with the objective of training individual researchers at different stages of their careers so that these investigators would become competitive cancer researchers. In addition, NCI has co-funded cancer-relevant projects that are part of the Minority Biomedical Research Support program of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) for many years. On evaluating these approaches, it became apparent that investigators supported through these mechanisms were not applying for NCI mainstream grants (such as R01 and R21 grants), and that a significant majority of those who did apply were unsuccessful. A critical observation derived from the analysis of the program was that most of these grants and research training opportunities were not at the MSIs, and that there was therefore a need for a program that would provide opportunities for MSIs to become more competitive when seeking NCI grants. There was also a need to provide an effective mechanism to enable NCI-designated Cancer Centers to reach scientists and students from diverse backgrounds and to reach the underserved populations within or outside their catchment areas.

Taken altogether, the MI/CCP program recognized the need for a strategy to help address the lack of competitive cancer researcher at MSIs as well as encourage an increase in cancer health disparities research at both MSIs and CCs. Prior to establishing the MI/CCP program, we sought the support of NIGMS, National Center for Research Resources, and National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, important institutes with existing training initiatives and mechanisms supporting MSIs.

As an additional step, to determine interest among the MSIs and CCs...

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