Abstract B036: Native American cancer prevention outreach strategies: Approaches developed for outreach teams working with Native Nations and Native American urban communities
Authors: Teufel-Shone Nicolette , Goldtooth-Begay Carol 
Published: September 2024

Community-directed outreach activities developed to provide cancer education and/or to promote cancer screening are quite varied and difficult to evaluate. The published literature offers few recent descriptions of cancer education efforts or interventions designed to enhance awareness of cancer risks or screening recommendations for specific underserved populations, e.g., Native Americans. Furthermore, the National Institute of Health’s guidance for Community Outreach Cores provided in Funding Opportunities for Center awards, is brief and offers few parameters and examples. This brevity is most evident in comparison with the lengthy descriptions provided for Research and Education Cores. This elusive language may be purposeful, recognizing the diversity of communities and technical assistance needed by research teams. The challenge, Outreach Cores use quite different approaches and generally do not share effective strategies that could be tested with other communities. The Outreach Core of the National Cancer Institute funded Native American Cancer Prevention Partnership (NACP), has employed several innovative strategies in the 2019-2024 funding period. To encourage increased national dialogue about culturally appropriate cancer-related outreach with underserved communities and outreach support for research teams, two strategies of the NACP Outreach Core are described. The intention is to contribute to the limited outreach literature and to inspire emerging or existing cores developing plans for engaging underserved communities and/or supporting research teams involved in community-based work. One NACP approach involves the development of a podcast series to provide cancer-related education and personal stories specifically by public health practitioners, health care providers and Native American patients, for Native American audiences. The second approach was designed to enhance research teams’ skills in reporting their activities and outcomes with communities. The Community Dissemination and Application Training (C-DAT) was developed to improve institutional and investigator capacity to conduct respectful research and share relevant research findings with Native American communities. C-DAT was supplemented with a Directory for Reaching Relatives Using Media (DRRUM), that contributes to investigators’ knowledge of dissemination venues used in Native American communities The DRRUM provides contacts and additional information on regional Native Nations or Native serving social media platforms/groups and tribal radio stations. NACP’s outreach activities are shared in an effort to initiate a Best Practices Inventory upon which outreach cores and interventions could draw. Unfortunately, evaluation continues to be a challenge, and is generally limited to reach and does not address impact.

Citation Format: Nicolette Teufel-Shone, Carol Goldtooth-Begay. Native American cancer prevention outreach strategies: Approaches developed for outreach teams working with Native Nations and Native American urban communities [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr B036.