Cherishing Our Hearts and Souls (COHS), a Roxbury-based community-centered coalition affiliated with HSPH, has received funding from the Education Network to Advance Cancer Clinical Trials and the network's founding partner, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to implement a community-wide effort to raise public awareness and improve access to cancer clinical trials.
COHS is one of three community organizations that will receive Pilot Education Program grants. Funding will be disbursed over the next three years. The other two programs are The Cross Cultural Collaborative of Pierce County, Tacoma, Wash. and the Decatur Community Partnership, Decatur, Ill.
COHS will seek to address the issue of community literacy around cancer clinical trials- working to change knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and intention among both health care providers and community leaders-to ultimately enhance access and increase participation in clinical trials.
Said principal investigator and director of the COHS coalition Brian Gibbs, instructor, Department of Health Policy and Management: "Despite the overwhelming presence of medical and research institutions of prestigious acclaim, Roxbury, like many urban African-American and poor neighborhoods across the country, experiences higher death rates from cancer and other diseases that are preventable; where people of color don't live as long and, regrettably, do not experience the same quality of life once diagnosed with a terminal disease. Through this funding and the strengthening of our partnerships, we will dispel certain historical myths about cancer and combine present-day knowledge about cancer clinical trials with our power to make individual, institutional, and community-level changes."
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
