Improving Cancer Outcomes in Native American Communities (ICON) - Community Engagement Core

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE: SUMMARY Community engagement is the foundation of our approach in ICON (the Improving Cancer Outcomes in Native American Communities U19 Center). Each of our Projects is embedded in long-term collaborations, and our Leadership Team has decades of experience in community-engaged research with tribes, which will help to ensure that systematic and meaningful community engagement is woven into every aspect of ICON's work. By integrating members of the CE Core in each Project team, as well as our Administrative Core, we position ourselves to channel lessons learned from these established partnerships into more general guidance for ICON community engagement, including the development of toolkits to support both university- and community-based researchers in partnerships to advance cancer health equity. Specifically, we propose to 1) establish a central Hub for community engagement on cancer; 2) support the continued development of community-engaged research protocols through Engagement Studios; 3) translate ICON research into improvements in health and health care for AI/AN patients, communities, and nations through Accelerators; and 4) engage tribal communities in dialogues about ICON research through Community Forums. Our CE work is embedded in frameworks that promote respectful inclusion of Indigenous American perspectives and knowledge into existing and new models of cancer research and care, as well as articulations for achieving health equity and systems transformation through community engagement. Of central importance is the advancement of integrations of Indigenous and European American perspectives and knowledge in ways that overcome simplistic oppositions and generate continued progress toward more authentic relationships based on collaborative partnerships, multidirectional dialogue, co-learning, shared leadership, and an investment in addressing community priorities in research. The CE Core will serve as the main resource for community dissemination in ICON as we continue to move towards research that is not only responsive to community priorities, but also applied successfully to them. Importantly, the quality and outcomes of our partnerships will be an explicit component of our evaluation plan to ensure that all ICON endeavors will be regularly modified, as needed, to improve the experience of community partners and the impact of our research in Oklahoma Tribal Nations.