Building a research infrastructure across multiple community organizations for a patient navigation program in Chicago's Chinatown

Chicago’s Chinatown is home to a sizeable community of low-income, first-generation Chinese-American immigrants. Despite the availability of breast and cervical cancer screening services in close proximity, screening and abnormal test follow-up rates are unacceptably low for Chinese women in this area. Many women are uninsured or publicly insured, live in culturally and linguistically isolated households, and are limited English speakers. We present the development of a community-based participatory research infrastructure across multiple community partners to implement an NCI-funded patient navigation program aimed at increasing breast and cervical cancer screening and follow-up. Core members of this community-academic partnership include the Chinese American Service League, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center, Rush University, and Northwestern University. The power of this partnership stems from the synergistic expertise, resources, and limitations of each organization. In addition to enabling the development and implementation of a navigation intervention, this research infrastructure has enhanced research capacity across partner community organizations – demonstrated by additional grant submissions, new research opportunities in men’s roles in women’s health, and identification and bridging of service gaps. However, systems-level challenges persist, including health coverage gaps, shrinking local and state services, and lack of Chinese-speaking providers. Current directions for this partnership include fulfilling a more patient-friendly health system by improving social and medical services coordination with an all-inclusive clinic that provides linguistically and culturally appropriate medical care for Chinatown’s underserved populations. This solid, genuine partnership serves as a viable model for other community-academic partnerships in underserved communities seeking to improve local health care systems.