BIRMINGHAM, AL — The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced today that University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has been awarded a $6.4 million grant to reduce cancer mortality disparities in minority and poor populations in Alabama and Mississippi. The award, one of 25 nationally, will fund the UAB Deep South Network for Cancer Control.

This is the second time the UAB Deep South Network has received NCI funding; it received a $6.1 million, five-year grant in 2000. Co-principal investigators are Edward Partridge, M.D, associate director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Mona Fouad, M.D., director of the UAB Minority Health and Research Center. Groesbeck Parham, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology and senior scientist at the UAB CCC, also is a lead investigator on the project.

The Deep South Network targets two poor, rural regions — Alabama’s Black Belt and the Mississippi Delta — and two urban areas — Jefferson County, Alabama, and the Hattiesburg/Laurel, Mississippi, metropolitan region. The network trains leaders in these communities, called community health advisors (CHAs), to educate family and friends about the importance of prevention and early detection of cancer. To date, the group has trained 883 CHAs, and increased mammography screening among African-Americans by 18 percent.

“The Deep South Network has already impacted the enormous disparity in health care that exists in these regions,” said Partridge. “This grant will allow us to build upon the infrastructure that we’ve established and train new community leaders who will educate their peers.”

As in the past five years, breast and cervical cancer will be the focus. A colon cancer emphasis also will be added.

Minority and underserved populations in the South have among the highest cancer rates in the country. The first step in educating the medically underserved is to teach that cancer screenings are effective and worthwhile. The next step is helping patients understand how the health care system works.

“This work is largely accomplished by the community health advisors, women and men who are ‘natural helpers’ in their communities who have been trained to promote cancer awareness and early detection screenings,” said Partridge. “These women and men are the real heroes of this effort.”

“The community health advisors understand the issues facing their individual communities, and people in their neighborhoods trust and listen to them,” said program manager Claudia Hardy. “They are able to educate, assist with access to care and help individuals navigate the health care system. Plus, the grant helps us provide significant economic support to the region by hiring local staff.”

In this round of funding, the NCI has awarded $95 million in grants to 25 institutions — one of the largest community based efforts of its kind.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center has been a national leader in community outreach since the 1980s. As the only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center in a five-state region, UAB has an obligation to address the South’s cancer burden, said Cancer Center Acting Director Peter Emanuel, M.D. “The value of the Deep South grant is enormous, because it allows community leaders to partner with our researchers. We believe this grassroots work, with a scientific basis, will bring our cancer rates down.”

The Deep South Network includes collaborators from the University of Alabama (UA), Tuskegee University (TU) and the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). At UA, John Higginbotham, Ph.D., of the Department of Community and Rural Medicine, and Rhoda Johnson, Ph.D., of the Department of Women’s Studies, are co-principal investigators. At USM, Agnes Hinton, R.D., Dr.P.H., co-director of the USM Center for Sustainable Health Outreach, and Nedra Lisovicz, Ph.D., are co-principal investigators. And at TU, the program is overseen by John Stone, M.D., Ph.D., of TU’s National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health.