Building Capacity from the Outside-In and Inside-Out: Changing the Disparity Paradigm

Background:

The goal of the MSM Center of Excellence for the Elimination of Disparities known as the Southeastern US Collaborative Center of Excellence for the Elimination of Disparities or SUCCEED is to develop a tri-state regional network focused on the reduction of breast and cervical cancer disparities among African American women.

Methods:

Activities utilized to achieve these goals include: 1. Disseminating evidence based approaches in cancer control and prevention through our Community Action Plan; 2. Promoting the development of empowered communities with effective coalitions to pursue the interests of the community at multiple levels; and 3. Enhancing the capacity of communities to implement evidence based cancer prevention and control program through Legacy grants.

Results and Discussion:

In this presentation, we describe successes and challenges we've faced in establishing the framework for our regional network with our partners. Specifically, we focus on the reciprocal lessons we have learned from our primary partners in advancing the goals of SUCCEED. Our train-the-trainer approach and experience sharing has increased the capacity of each partner and ancillary partners to pursue the goals of SUCCEED. We describe how these processes served an instructive role as we provide training and disseminate evidence based interventions to our community stakeholders. We conclude by sharing lessons about the necessity of program flexibility and illustrate this idea through several examples such as providing training in action advocacy. The incorporation of these lessons has ultimately brought us closer to achieving the goals of SUCCEED and reducing cancer disparities for African American women.