Sustainable Education to Eliminate Disparities (SEED)
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Non-technical overview of the event and relevance to breast cancer: The proposed collaborative project aims to sow the seeds of Sustainable Education to Eliminate Disparities (SEED) in breast cancer in Greater Bay Area African American (AA) communities. The initial event will be the 2nd Annual Breast Cancer and African Americans (BCAA) conference, a daylong breast cancer conference specifically designed to address cancer disparities in Greater Bay Area AA communities. Conference sessions will cover issues across the breast cancer continuum and focus, in particular, on those issues which are most relevant to AA women and families. Speakers, including AA advocates, clinicians, researchers, survivors, and other cancer experts, will share the most current information on breast cancer risk reduction, early detection, treatment, and survivorship. The BCAA conference will be followed by a series of workshops where Ambassadors for Change (volunteers from the BCAA conference) will collaborate with Community Advisory Committee (CAC) members and Stanford Cancer Institute Community Partnership Program (SCI-CPP) staff to develop a locally and culturally relevant breast cancer resource tool kit for Greater Bay Area AA communities. These workshops will provide the Ambassadors for Change with culturally tailored outreach, education, and advocacy training and engage them in identifying appropriate community-based dissemination strategies for the toolkit. The completed toolkit will be unveiled and distributed at the 3rd Annual BCAA conference in May 2014. Community-based distribution of the toolkit will continue beyond the scope of this project
 
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 Description of event structure and intended audience: The proposed events will take place over the course of one year. The 2nd Annual BCAA conference is a culturally tailored daylong breast cancer conference serving AA breast cancer survivors, family members, advocates, lay community members, and health and social service providers from across the Greater Bay Area. During the conference, structured roundtable discussions with participants will gather information about breast cancer resource needs of Greater Bay Area AA communities. Findings from these discussions will drive the development of a resource toolkit, designed by and for Greater Bay Area AAs. A series of workshops will follow the conference and will gather feedback from multiple stakeholders, (breast cancer advocates, educators, and community members (Ambassadors for Change)), on the design, production, and dissemination of the toolkit. Workshops will increase breast cancer knowledge and advocacy skills through training in breast cancer biology, effective communication, and breast cancer and health advocacy. In producing this toolkit and developing local capacity to effectively utilize this resource, SEED aims to provide Greater Bay Area AAs with a valued and culturally relevant tool that they can use to fight breast cancer in their communities. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Innovative elements of the event and potential to generate new ideas/facilitate collaboration: Unlike many annual conferences which offer little or no follow up, SEED will facilitate community engagement to eliminate breast cancer disparities. SEED will strengthen and add new members to the already strong and diverse stakeholder group that makes up the BCAA CAC. By bring together advocates, researchers, and community members, SEED will not only enhance the depth and reach of the BCAA conference, but will also result in important co-learning and relationship building that will generate additional opportunities to better understand and reduce breast cancer disparities in Greater Bay Area AA communities. The conference will provide a platform for community members to learn potentially life-saving information across the breast cancer continuum and to share their breast cancer resource needs. Community members will be recruited and trained to serve as Ambassadors for Change over the course of the months following the conference. Building up the CAC and the group of Ambassadors will keep participants from the Greater Bay Area AA community engaged in the work to eliminate disparities year-round. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Advocacy involvement: Breast cancer advocates will oversee and actively participate in both planning and implementation of the SEED project. The BCAA CAC is largely composed of AA breast cancer advocates, including a breast cancer survivor, support from the local chapter of the American Cancer Society, the Women’s Cancer Resource Center, the Multi-Cultural Cancer Community, and career cancer educator and former senior manager of the NCI’s Cancer Information Service, California Region. The Chair of the CAC brings more than a decade of experience in breast cancer advocacy to her leadership role. Expanding the CAC using the current members vast advocacy networks will strengthen our ability to build AA community capacity for self-efficacy and to sustain the education needed to eliminate disparities in breast cancer.