EGRP Cancer Epidemiology News

November 2024

• Increasing Engagement in Cancer Control Research
• New Funding Opportunities
• Grants Policy Announcements
• Requests for Information
• Career Opportunity
• News and Blog Posts

Increasing Engagement in Cancer Control Research

The National Cancer Plan (NCP) establishes action-oriented goals to prevent cancer, reduce mortality, and maximize quality of life for individuals affected by cancer. The NCP includes a set of strategies associated with each goal, describing essential research directions and implementation activities needed to maximize benefits for everyone. More than a framework, the NCP serves as a call to action to our society, urging every community, organization, and individual to unite and act in a shared mission to end suffering from cancer.

One of the NCP’s eight goals is to engage every person, meaning every person with cancer or at risk for cancer has an opportunity to participate in research or otherwise contribute to the collective knowledge base, and barriers to their participation are eliminated. Strategies to meet this goal include

• Enable every patient to contribute their health data and biospecimens to research in a secure, privacy-protected manner that honors their wishes for the use of these resources to conduct cancer research
• Expand research infrastructure for all types of clinical and observational studies, developing and streamlining methods to increase access to participation for all
• Facilitate rapid referral, access, enrollment, accrual, and retention of diverse populations in clinical trials
• Integrate clinical research into routine clinical care using methods that avoid increasing provider or patient burden
• Ensure that opportunities to participate in and benefit from research are equitably distributed
• Develop and implement methods to return research results in meaningful ways to patients who participate in studies

This article highlights several initiatives and notices of funding opportunities spearheaded by the NCI’s Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP), along with other efforts within the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS), aimed at advancing the NCP’s goal to “Engage Every Person” through diverse types of engagement in cancer research.

Participant Engagement and Cancer Genome Sequencing (PE-CGS) Network

The PE-CGS Network is part of the Cancer Moonshot^SM initiative, and it is a collaborative effort between researchers and participants to lead to new discoveries in cancer genomics. The PE-CGS Network promotes and supports direct engagement of cancer survivors as participants to address gaps in the understanding of the molecular changes associated with rare cancers or rare cancer subsets; highly lethal cancers; cancers with an early age of onset; cancers with high disparities in incidence and/or mortality; or cancers in understudied populations. Research centers in PE-CGS partnered with patients, participants, and community members since the inception of their programs to provide input on all aspects of the projects. In particular, the return of genomic sequencing results to participants, which in some cases could drive treatment decisions, is a unique way that the network is engaging participants.

The PE-CGS Network’s goals also include identification of best practices for engaging and communicating with participants, while also responding to participant preferences in genomics research. The network is evaluating methods of engagement through the use of focus groups, community cafes, and surveys and developed educational materials around cancer genomics with input from community partners.

For more information on PE-CGS, visit https://epi.grants.cancer.gov/events/pe-cgs/.

Research to Understand and Address the Survivorship Needs of Individuals with Advanced Cancer

EGRP has been working with others in DCCPS, including the Office of Cancer Survivorship (OCS), to identify and fill gaps in knowledge regarding the survivorship needs of people living with advanced and metastatic cancer. In May 2021, DCCPS held a workshop on this topic that included researchers, clinicians, metastatic cancer survivors, and advocates. Subsequently, a summary of the evidence gaps and key opportunities identified at this workshop in the areas of epidemiology and surveillance, symptom management, psychosocial research, health care delivery, and health behaviors was published in the April 2022 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. DCCPS has since published a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO), RFA-CA-22-027, to support studies to better understand and/or address survivorship needs for individuals living with likely incurable cancer. The NOFO required that applications include a plan for stakeholder engagement during the development, planning, and conduct of the proposed research projects. The NOFO stated that stakeholders must be representative of the population(s) of focus in the application.

For more information on DCCPS’s interest in the area of survivorship needs of individuals living with advanced and metastatic cancer, visit https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/ocs/special-focus-areas/metastatic-survivorship-needs.

Cohorts for Environmental Exposures and Cancer Risk (CEECR)

The CEECR program, a collaborative effort between NCI and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), supports five prospective cancer epidemiology cohort studies addressing critical research gaps related to environmental exposures and cancer risk in diverse populations. Community engagement is a cornerstone of the CEECR cohorts—building and fostering trust in the science and to enhance recruitment, follow-up, retention, communication, and dissemination of results. CEECR sets a benchmark for community engagement by leveraging established community engagement programs at participating institutions and local communities; creating new infrastructures, such as community partners, community engagement boards, and community ambassadors; as well as leveraging the expertise of dedicated staff with long-standing experiences in community engagement. An innovative aspect of community engagement in the CEECR cohorts is their strategic use of social media to connect with the communities. CEECR has incorporated a multi-faceted approach to engagement, often involving community engagement programs at state fairs, health fairs, corporate fairs, health councils, food pantries, and civic and religious groups, and via radio, television, and Internet advertisements. The CEECR cohorts are currently enrolling a diverse group of racial and ethnic populations across multiple states, including rural communities, to ensure broad representation and relevance.

For more information on CEECR, visit https://ceecr.org/.

Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS) Health Equity Hubs

On October 2, 2024, the NIH Common Fund announced funding for five Health Equity Research Hubs (Hubs) to support community-led research projects. The Community Partnerships to Advance Science for Society (ComPASS) Program empowers community-based organizations to lead in the design, research, implementation, and evaluation of projects aimed at addressing community needs and reducing health disparities. The ComPASS program includes 25 Community-Led, Health Equity Structural Interventions (CHESIs), a coordinating center, and five Hubs. These Hubs serve to enhance the scientific rigor of the CHESI projects by providing specialized research support tailored to community health (e.g., nutrition access, health care access, and the built environment). Additionally, the Hubs aim to augment the ComPASS initiative’s success toward its goal: to develop a new, scalable model for community-led, multisectoral structural intervention research, which can inform efforts across NIH and other federal agencies. The ComPASS program is funded by the NIH Common Fund and managed collaboratively by NIH staff from the Common Fund and other NIH institutes. The five Hubs are programmatic and managed by NCI, ensuring the alignment with the NCP.

For more information on ComPASS, visit https://commonfund.nih.gov/compass/.

Open Funding Opportunities

There are several NOFOs that NCI participates in that include various aspects of engagement. These include

• RFA-MD-24-010, Environmental Health Disparities Centers (P50, Clinical Trial Optional): The Environmental Health Disparities (EHD) Center supported by NCI will enable capacity building, training of early-stage investigators, and infrastructure support to advance pilot and research projects that are scalable and allow for collaboration with communities. NCI is interested in community-engaged approaches that expand partnerships (e.g., cancer coalitions) to develop strategies that could lead to actionable changes and be translated to bring about community and system change for cancer control and prevention.
• NOT-CA-25-004, Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Administrative Supplements for Assessing Capacity to Address Obesity for Cancer Prevention and Control: This NOSI encourages NCI-funded investigators to apply for supplement funds to support research addressing obesity for cancer prevention and control. The research objectives are to examine the prevalence of obesity in cancer center catchment areas or relevant administrative units, such as cities, counties, or states; carry out an environmental scan of key collaborators and the policy landscape in these areas that are related to or addressing obesity and its determinants; and convene representatives of these groups to discuss and report out on the community and organizational readiness to develop and evaluate a whole-of-systems approach to obesity, including both enhanced obesity care, prevention, and multiple policy, systems, and environmental approaches to these aspects of obesity.
• NOT-OD-25-015, NOSI: Administrative Supplement for Research and Capacity Building Efforts Related to Bioethical Issues: Administrative supplements are available to support research on bioethical issues to develop or support the development of an evidence base that may inform future policy directions, and/or certain efforts to develop or augment bioethics research capacity. Examples of projects include, but are not limited to, collection, use, and/or sharing of real-world data; patient, community, and public engagement; return of research results; biospecimen and data sharing; new and emerging technology development and use; advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in innovation and research; population descriptors in research; projects to develop or augment bioethics research capacity in supported areas; and research on topics that can develop or support the development of an evidence base that may inform future policy directions.

Other open NOFOs where community or participant engagement will bolster research efforts include

• RFA-HG-25-004, RFA-HG-25-003, RFA-HG-25-002, Advancing Genomic Medicine Research (R03, R21, R01)
• RFA-NR-24-006, Understanding the Intersection of Social Inequities to Optimize Health and Reduce Health Disparities: The Axes Initiative (R01)
• RFA-HG-23-017, Investigator-Initiated Research in Genomics and Health Equity (R01)
• PAR-25-186, Cancer Epidemiology Cohorts: Building the Next Generation of Research Cohorts (U01)
• PAR-25-275, Research Opportunities in Established Cancer Epidemiology Cohort Studies (U01)
• PAR-25-144, PAR-25-143, PAR-25-233, Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R01, R21, R03)
• PAR-22-064, Patient-Clinician Relationship: Improving Health Outcomes in Populations that Experience Health Care Disparities (R01)
• PAR-22-145, Leveraging Health IT to Address and Reduce Health Care Disparities (R01)
• PA-25-294, PA-25-295, Innovative Approaches to Studying Cancer Communication in the New Information Ecosystem (R01, R21)
• PAR-24-207, Interventions to Address Disparities in Liver Disease and Liver Cancer (R01, Clinical Trials Optional)
• PAR-23-293, PAR-23-294, PAR-23-295, Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research Grants (R01, R21, R03)
• NOT-MD-23-002, Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Addressing the Etiology of Health Disparities and Health Advantages Among Immigrant Populations
• NOT-OD-22-178, NOSI: Increasing Uptake of Evidence-Based Screening in Diverse Populations Across the Lifespan

For more on funding opportunities with DCCPS participation, visit https://cancercontrol.cancer.gov/funding/funding-opportunities.

New Funding Opportunities

Grants Policy Announcements

Requests for Information

Career Opportunity

News and Blog Posts