Participatory evaluation of a community-academic partnership to inform capacity-building and sustainability.

The Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network (TBCCN) was formed as a partnership comprised of committed community based organizations (grassroots, service, health care organizations) and a National Cancer Institute designated cancer center working together to reduce cancer health disparities. Adhering to principles of community-based participatory research, TBCCN's primary aims are to develop and sustain outreach, training, and research programs that aim to reach medically underserved, multicultural and multilingual populations within the Tampa Bay tri-county area. Using a participatory evaluation approach, we recently evaluated the partnerships' priorities for cancer education and outreach; perspectives on the partnerships' adherence to CBPR principles; and suggestions for sustaining TBCCN and its efforts. The purpose of this paper is to describe implementation and outcomes of this participatory evaluation of a community/academic partnership, and to illustrate the application of evaluation findings for partnership capacity-building and sustainability. Our evaluation provides evidence for partners' perceived benefits and realized expectations of the partnership and illustrates the value of ongoing and continued partnership assessment to directly inform program activities and build community capacity and sustainability.

Ethics of clear health communication: applying the CLEAN Look approach to communicate biobanking information for cancer research.

Cancer innovations, such as biobanking technologies, are continuously evolving to improve our understanding and knowledge about cancer prevention and treatment modalities. However, the public receives little communication about biobanking and is often unaware about this innovation until asked to donate biospecimens. It is the researchers' ethical duty to provide clear communications about biobanking and biospecimen research. Such information allows the public to understand biobanking processes and facilitates informed decision making about biospecimen donation. The aims of this paper are 1) to examine the importance of clear communication as an ethical imperative when conveying information about cancer innovations and 2) to illustrate the use of an organizing framework, the CLEAN ( C ulture, L iteracy, E ducation, A ssessment, and N etworking) Look approach for creating educational priming materials about the topic of biobanking.

Formative research on perceptions of biobanking: what community members think.

Preparing healthy community members with timely communications prior to engaging them in a request to donate biospecimens promises to improve the experience of biobanking participation. To this end, a qualitative study was conducted to assess community member knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and informational needs about cancer-related biospecimen collection in a large metropolitan area in southwest Florida. The study utilized purposive sampling techniques to recruit a total of 95 participants to participate in 12 focus groups, segmented by race/ethnicity and language preference (mixed race, African American only, and Spanish speaking) and age (18-29, 30-54, and 55 and older). Focus group interviews were analyzed using content analysis to identify emergent themes. Overall, participants in the 30 years and older groups were favorable toward participating in biobanking if their concerns were addressed, such as confidentiality and consent issues, in contrast to participants aged 18-29 who were more skeptical. For all participants, the desire to participate in research that seeks new cancer treatments outweighed mistrust. Moreover, many cited the potential scientific benefit for future generations as a primary motivator. Finally, in some groups a therapeutic misconception was expressed, where participants expressed a willingness to forego confidentiality of their health status in exchange for therapeutic benefit. This study contributes to the literature on community perceptions of the benefits and barriers of biobanking and adds to the development of meaningful education communication priming tools to advance understandings about biobanking.

A SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS APPROACH TO UNDERSTAND CHANGES IN A CANCER DISPARITIES COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP NETWORK.

The Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network (TBCCN) is one of the Community Network Program sites funded (2005-10) by the National Cancer Institute's Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities. TBCCN was tasked to form a sustainable, community-based partnership network focused on the goal of reducing cancer health disparities among racial-ethnic minority and medically underserved populations. This article reports evaluation outcome results from a social network analysis and discusses the varying TBCCN partner roles-in education, training, and research-over a span of three years (2007-09). The network analysis included 20 local community partner organizations covering a tricounty area in Southwest Florida. In addition, multiple externally funded, community-based participatory research pilot projects with community-academic partners have either been completed or are currently in progress, covering research topics including culturally targeted colorectal and prostate cancer screening education, patient navigation focused on preventing cervical cancer in rural Latinas, and community perceptions of biobanking. The social network analysis identified a trend toward increased network decentralization based on betweenness centrality and overall increase in number of linkages, suggesting network sustainability. Degree centrality, trust, and multiplexity exhibited stability over the three-year time period. These results suggest increased interaction and interdependence among partner organizations and less dependence on the cancer center. Social network analysis enabled us to quantitatively evaluate partnership network functioning of TBCCN in terms of network structure and information and resources flows, which are integral to understanding effective coalition practice based on Community Coalition Action Theory ( Butterfoss and Kegler 2009). Sharing the results of the social network analysis with the partnership network is an important component of our coalition building efforts. A comprehensive baseline needs assessment for the next five-year funding phase (2010-15) of TBCCN Community Networks Program Centers (CNP Center) is under way to further evaluate the growth and sustainability of the partnership network, with an emphasis on community-based intervention research that takes into account culture and literacy. [social network, health care disparities, cancer screening].

Application of geographic information systems and asset mapping to facilitate identification of colorectal cancer screening resources.

OBJECTIVE: We sought to identify and map the geographic distribution of available colorectal cancer screening resources; following identification of this priority within a needs assessment of a local community-academic collaborative to reduce cancer health disparities in medically underserved communities. METHODS: We used geographic information systems (GIS) and asset mapping tools to visually depict resources in the context of geography and a population of interest. We illustrate two examples, offer step-by-step directions for mapping, and discuss the challenges, lessons learned, and future directions for research and practice. RESULTS: Our positive asset driven, community-based approach illustrated the distribution of existing colonoscopy screening facilities and locations of populations and organizations who might use these resources. A need for additional affordable and accessible colonoscopy resources was identified. CONCLUSION: These transdisciplinary community mapping efforts highlight the benefit of innovative community-academic partnerships for addressing cancer health disparities by bolstering infrastructure and community capacity-building for increased access to colonoscopies.

USING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS TO EVALUATE COMMUNITY CAPACITY BUILDING OF A REGIONAL COMMUNITY CANCER NETWORK.

The Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network (TBCCN) is one of 25 Community Network Programs funded by the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities with the objectives to create a collaborative infrastructure of academic and community based organizations and to develop effective and sustainable interventions to reduce cancer health disparities. In order to describe the network characteristics of the TBCCN as part of our ongoing evaluation efforts, we conducted social network analysis surveys with our community partners in 2007 and 2008. One key finding showed that the mean trust value for the 20 community partners in the study increased from 1.8 to 2.1 (p<0.01), suggesting a trend toward increased trust in the network. These preliminary results suggest that TBCCN has led to greater collaboration among the community partners that were formed through its capacity-building and evidence-based dissemination activities for impacting cancer health disparities at the community level.