Major Scientific Findings from the NYU Oral Cancer RAAHP Center

Over the past seven years, the activities of the NYU Oral Cancer RAAHP Center, an $8.3m, multi-center NIDCR/NIH Center for Research to Reduce Oral Health Disparities involved investigators from 15 universities and agencies, geographically spread from Puerto Rico to Boston, from New York to Texas. The overall aims of the NYU Oral Cancer RAAHP Center was to conduct studies and promote activities that would reduce oral cancer disparities in the United States, especially in minority populations who are known to have higher rates of oral cancer. The Center included four major studies: 1) an epidemiologic study on environmental and genetic risk factors for Oral Epithelial Dysplasia in Puerto Rico (PI: D. Morse, NYU College of Dentistry); 2) a clinical study directly comparing the screening and diagnostic validity of five current oral cancer detection technologies against the gold standard of surgical biopsy (PI: D. Sirois, NYU College of Dentistry); 3) a dental practice-based smoking cessation Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) using Personalized Risk Feedback (PI: J. Ostroff, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center); and 4) a study of factors related to willingness to participate in oral cancer screening and in biomedical research studies (PI: R. Katz, NYU College of Dentistry). Additionally, over the 7 years the RAAHP Center funded and supported a total of 14 scientific and bioethics pilot studies related to the four major studies. The presentation will focus on the major scientific findings from our studies, with particular attention to those findings with clear and direct clinical relevance.