Abstract PO-044: A pilot concept for cancer education outreach to community K-8 schools

Introduction: The authors examined feasible mechanisms for a cancer research lab at a university to improve racial/cultural cancer disparities issues in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. The goal was to find tangible mechanisms to preliminarily and proactively attend to racial disparities issues based on recent events in our community. Materials and Methods: The authors identified four domains of activity that could potentially be deployed to the local Black community. These consisted of improved community education, improved health care access, improved researcher education about racism/cultural bias, and education on the concept of trauma informed care. Community cancer education outreach was judged most feasible program’s researchers. In the past, education outreach had been performed at K-8 school science fairs and a community cancer education program where we have been instructors (an entity called Mini-medical school). Demographics for past interactions were analyzed to gauge directing further outreach. Results: In the Twin cities proper 16-19% of the residents are Black (Primarily African American and Somali); in the larger metropolitan area 8-9%, and 6-7% overall in Minnesota. We found that our research program outreach had occurred at a school with only 4.4% Black/African American students. At the larger Cancer education program (Mini medical school), approximately 3.5% of attendees were African American. Both of these outreach activities occurred in communities with much lower percentage than the 16-19% Black community demographic (P<0.001). Discussion: We plan to contact primary schools in local communities of color where we can participate at science or technology fairs as educators/judges based on our scientific expertise. Further, through these local schools and their communities, Cancer disparities education (such as the mini-medical school) could be tailored to neighborhood school communities as part of this outreach. The authors felt participation in this activity by Black physicians/scientists/students, inexpensive access, and maximizing student/family availability for the program would be necessary to optimize the experience. We conclude that such a grass root pilot would provide useful education for the community, perhaps improve cancer research interests in primary grade students, and could feasibly be extended to additional cancer research labs at our university, based on the results of a 1-2 school pilot effort.

Citation Format: Juliana M. Ondrey, Frank Ondrey. A pilot concept for cancer education outreach to community K-8 schools [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Virtual Conference: Thirteenth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2020 Oct 2-4. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2020;29(12 Suppl):Abstract nr PO-044.