Neighborhoods, Stress and Cancer Outcomes Across the Cancer Control Continuum: Leveraging ecological theory and geospatial analytics to improve cancer prevention and outcomes (Project LEGO)

ABSTRACT This application is being submitted in response to “Administrative supplements to advance development of transdisciplinary and large-scale population science and cancer control research projects.” There is a growing recognition that cancer risk and outcomes stem from complex, layered systems. Clarifying how contextual and neighborhood factors influence biological processes associated with cancer risk, the development of cancer, or outcomes among those living with cancer can significantly inform and advance cancer control and population science prevention and interventions across the cancer control continuum. Our group and others have been leading new research that demonstrates linkages between the neighborhoods in which people live, work, and play, and their connection to behavioral cancer risk factors, biological drivers of cancer, and survivorship outcomes. Yet, accelerating and advancing research linking neighborhood contexts to biological systems and cancer requires transdisciplinary team science approaches with multiple interrelated projects. Project LEGO (Neighborhoods, Stress and Cancer Outcomes Across the Cancer Control Continuum: Leveraging ecological theory and geospatial analytics to improve cancer prevention and outcomes) brings together an ongoing partnership between investigators at three regionally located NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers (Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Maryland, and University of Virginia). A team of transdisciplinary scientists from fields in behavioral medicine, geospatial analytics, molecular epidemiology, and cancer biology have been meeting monthly for over one year to conceptualize and propose a large-scale P01 research proposal. The next phase in our planning will require refinement of our scientific framework and model, further summarizing the salient mechanisms related to stress-biology and cancer that we aim to investigate, continued demonstration of collaboration through publication of shared scientific products, development of key projects that will drive a large multi-institutional research agenda, and the establishment of a community advisory board (CAB) to help focus our work on meaningful impact within our respective communities. We propose to use this administrative supplement to help accelerate and advance these goals. Our specific aims are to 1) Develop a strong partnership model, defining our transdisciplinary team to support the development of a large-scale, multi-component grant application based on LEGO; 2) Identify a unifying framework or model advancing synergistic transdisciplinary hypotheses that can be advanced across the set of identified research projects within LEGO; and 3) Advance collaborative publications using existing data and collect additional feasibility data in service of the proposed projects. We expect that these activities will culminate in a draft proposal for P01 grant submission to the National Cancer Institute.