Developing a campus-community partnership: Lessons learned in an urban African American community in Miami, Florida

In the face of changing demographics in South Florida, Liberty City remains one of the few predominately African American areas in the Miami metropolitan area. It is also one of the most disadvantaged; nearly half of its residents live below the federal poverty level and 40% of adults have no health insurance. To address cancer health disparities in this neighborhood, the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center established a campus-community partnership. The partnership includes Sylvester faculty and its Disparities and Community Outreach Core, community organizers, area health care providers, cancer survivors, religious and civic leaders. Together, we began collecting data to identify potential opportunities for intervention. To start, we conducted 17 key informant interviews to better understand community concerns. Primary concerns were unemployment, poverty and crime. The main health concerns were HIV, diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Environmental hazards, including water quality, were also mentioned. We then examined cancer surveillance data for the community and identified excess mortality rates for lung, oral, breast and cervical cancers. We are in the process of conducting a larger survey to document barriers to healthcare utilization and cancer prevention. Lay Community Health Workers are assessing health behaviors such as cancer screening, tobacco use, diet and exercise within a convenience sample of 250 adults from Liberty Square, a 756-unit housing project within the heart of Liberty City. The findings will help inform our efforts to acquire extramural funding and implement community-based interventions to encourage individual and social change.