Abstract IA42: Addressing prostate cancer disparities through precision public health: The CaPTC experience
Authors: Odedina Folakemi ,   CaPTC Investigators
Published: August 2020

Africa is now facing a major public health challenge relative to noncommunicable diseases, especially cancer, while still dealing with the challenges of infectious diseases. Alarmingly, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will have more than an 85% increase in cancer deaths by 2030. Cancer continues to create a huge clinical, economic, and humanistic burden for Africa. Based on our research team's work in Africa since 2006, we know firsthand that there are several challenges in fighting cancer in Africa, which requires innovative strategies to overcome the burden of cancer in Africa. Precision medicine (PM) carries the promise of tailoring treatment, prevention, and behavioral interventions in a precise and personalized manner to optimize medical benefit and minimize harm for an individual patient. While the focus on PM brings an exciting era in health care, there is considerable concern that it may shift focus away from social determinants of health and much-needed strategies to address community-based efforts on cancer prevention and control. This is especially of significant concern in low-resource communities that are unable to afford PM, especially SSA countries. The question then becomes, how can we leverage the PM effort to provide effective community health in low-resource communities? The Prostate Cancer Transatlantic Consortium (CaPTC) is an NCI-EGRP approved consortium that addresses the global disproportionate burden of prostate cancer (CaP) among Black men connected by the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Founded in 2015, CaPTC's effort in Africa includes Precision Public Health (PPH): “using community engagement, community data and technology with geographical precision to prevent prostate cancer, predict prostate cancer risks, develop tailored and targeted programs to improve community health, and foster public health policies to reduce CaP disparities.” CaPTC's PPH efforts in Africa include (1) integration of community data, expert opinions and literature review to develop CaP research priorities for Nigeria; (2) use of web-based and mobile technologies to make oncology clinical trials accessible in Africa; (3) geographical mapping of CaP incidence in Nigeria using geospatial analysis; (4) examining genetic, environmental, and behavioral etiology of CaP in familial cohort of West African men in Nigeria, Cameroon, and US; (5) development of standardized and uniform behavioral and epidemiologic measures for the study of CaP in Black men globally; and (6) facilitation of global data sharing for multiethnic studies of prostate cancer in Black men by harmonizing and pooling existing data to create Big Data for the CaP research community. To effectively address the public health challenges of cancer in SSA, deliberate and concerted efforts must be made to implement programs that will provide precise community-tailored intervention to SSA populations at the right time. PPH offers a meaningful approach to address cancer disparities in Africa.

Citation Format: Folakemi Odedina, CaPTC Investigators. Addressing prostate cancer disparities through precision public health: The CaPTC experience [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2018 Nov 2-5; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(6 Suppl):Abstract nr IA42.