The Yale Cancer Prevention and Control Training Program

The Yale Cancer Prevention and Control (CPC) Training Program, which is funded from August 2020 through July 2025, requests five additional years of support for an innovative, multi-disciplinary and translational training program at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and the Yale Cancer Center (YCC). Given the critical need to train outstanding CPC scientists to advance our fight against cancer, a long history of successful CPC research and training by Yale faculty, and our remarkable accomplishments over the last four years, we are excited to request a renewal of the CPC Training Program at Yale. Our Yale CPC Training Program will leverage strength from a Pre-Doctoral Program within YSPH, and a Post-Doctoral Program within YCC that draws from many disciplines but is administratively housed within YSPH. The Yale CPC Training Program aims to educate, train and mentor pre- and post-doctoral fellows in six thematic areas that are critical to CPC: cancer etiology, cancer outcomes, lifestyle behavioral interventions, implementation science, community-engaged research, and data science. These six areas were selected because they are critical domains in the spectrum of CPC research, they leverage strengths of our faculty, and they will ensure that T32 trainees will achieve pivotal growth through the program and become leaders in novel, impactful CPC research. Fellows will also directly participate and interact with the six YCC Research Programs and YCC Clinical Research Teams, which are composed of scientists and clinicians conducting cancer research and delivering cancer care. Fellows will work with 32 Yale CPC Training Program Faculty members, who collectively have exceptional expertise in our six thematic areas. The Faculty members come from 12 different departments across Yale and have trained 287 Pre-Doctoral and 356 Post-Doctoral Fellows over the last ten years, with the vast majority working in cancer-related careers. The average research funding is $769,904 per faculty member, with a total of ~ $24 Million (in annual direct costs). Our training program will include a comprehensive mentoring program, participation in active CPC research in the six thematic areas, research-in-progress meetings, professional development seminars, specialized training on the responsible conduct of research and reproducibility, and additional integration with rich resources from across Yale University. Our program will select the most highly qualified candidates who wish to pursue a career in CPC. At the conclusion of their training, it is our goal that individuals supported by this T32 will have developed the knowledge and skills necessary to function independently, and will develop and carry out innovative, impactful studies filling key gaps in CPC research, potentially shifting paradigms, changing practices and influencing policies. Ultimately, public health will benefit from an exceptional cadre of investigators committed to careers in CPC.