A vital part of our mission at the Cancer Prevention and Control Program is to create mutually beneficial collaborations with our community, especially when it comes to health issues that have the greatest impact on our local communities here in South Carolina. In these cooperative projects, both our researchers and members of diverse communities throughout our state contribute their unique expertise in working towards common public health goals. We establish these beneficial relationships through community-based participatory research, with two major ongoing projects exemplifying the success of this type of collaboration: the South Carolina Cancer Disparities Community Network and DIDACTIC.
The overall goal of the South Carolina Cancer Disparities Community Network is to address cancer disparities in our state through research, education and training. The focus of the current phase of the network is addressing cancer disparities among African Americans in South Carolina through partnerships with community-based organizations.
In the DIDACTIC study, we collaborate with churches in the African-American community as a way to disseminate and implement a health intervention that involves diet, physical activity and stress reduction. The communities we target in the DIDACTIC study are those most disproportionately affected by health disparities in our state.