Cancer Prevention & Control

In 2021, DCI reorganized the former Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program to form the Cancer Prevention and Control (CPC) Program. CPC’s goal is to reduce the cancer burden in the DCI catchment area by way of focusing on prevention and control. With particular attention to addressing cancer health disparities, the CPC Program fosters increased collaboration with other DCI researchers, health systems, and communities. Led by Kathryn Pollak, PhD and Leah Zullig, PhD the CPC Program has three Specific Aims: 1) Develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate behavioral, communications, psychosocial, and clinical interventions focused on cancer prevention; 2) Optimize cancer care delivery for patients from diagnosis and treatment and improve the health, transitions of care, and end-of-life support for patients with cancer and their families; and 3) Impact policy to transform cancer prevention and control. Our scientific efforts span the cancer care continuum from primary prevention, cancer screening, control, and palliative care. Since its creation, we highlight several accomplishments - First, CPC has a strong emphasis on implementation science with two new NCI-funded R01 awards and a P50 that assesses scale-up of the National Veterans Health Administration TeleOncology Service. Second, in partnership with the DCI’s Community Outreach and Engagement, our members use the newly-created CREST dashboard, an interactive analytical dashboard that allows in-depth evaluation of the population demographics across the 104 counties that constitute the DCI catchment area. We also have new K08 and R21 awards to junior faculty mentored by CPC members. CPC members conducted research prompting the FDA to both ban flavored e-cigarettes and consider a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes as well as lower the nicotine content in cigarettes. Finally, CPC helps to guide clinicians in treatment decision- making and promoting goals-of-care discussions. CPC is comprised of 60 full members from 14 departments and 4 schools within Duke University. Total direct funding for full program members is $11.8M, of which $9.0M is peer reviewed, including $4.9M from the NCI. Since the inception of the program in 2021 through 2023, program members published 1,030 cancer- focused papers, 191 (19%) are intra-programmatic, 300 (29%) are inter-programmatic collaborations and 171 (17%) are impact factor over 10. From 2021 through 2023, CPC enrolled 4,573 participants to all trials and 3,371 to interventional trials. Overall, CPC is an active and collaborative program whose research is vision- driven, responsive to the needs of our catchment area, and whose members’ work has had a direct impact on national guidelines and statewide policies that influence cancer care and cancer burden.