Cancer Collaborative Work Groups

About

Cancer is complex. It affects people differently. Not everyone benefits the same to improvements made in prevention and treatment. Many are working to address this but are not always connected. The Community and Cancer Sience Network is working to bridge the gap between community and science.  This project is one of three approaches to be this bridge.

The Community and Cancer Science Network (CCSN) is a broad collaborative across multiple sectors and specialties that come together to address breast and lung cancer disparities in Wisconsin through collaborative work group formation, understanding the role of mammographic quality, and a cancer disparities pilot curriculum for research and community stakeholders​.

The CCSN and its related projects is an initiative and investment of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment created to focus on lung and breast cancer disparities. 

Learn more. 

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Aims

To effectively address cancer disparities, we need to look at the issue from many different perspectives including:

• survivors,
• physicians,
• health care providers,
• community based organizations, 
• researchers - from population science to biology. 

These diverse collaborative work groups rarely occur naturally, and this collaboration isn't often intuitive. We are helping to bridge different perspectives, creating meaningful interaction, and growing partnerships through transdisciplinary collaboration. 

​In transdisciplinary collaboration, teams learn from each other, develop a broader and deeper understanding of a problem, and are better equipped to create effective solutions.

Collaborative Work Groups will be  in urban and rural areas of the state, focused on specific topics associated with breast and lung cancer including:

• environment
• health care access and quality
• stress
• commercial tobacco use

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Expected Outcomes

The overall goal of the Collaborative Work Group initiative is to build teams of diverse community and academic perspectives to develop and implement integrated approaches to address breast and lung cancer disparities in Wisconsin that learn together, create collectively, and overcome issues of trust and power imbalances.

​The initiative will build collaborative work groups in up to six communities to meaningfully impact one of the topics identified by the AHW Design Team to reduce breast and/or lung cancer disparities: environment, tobacco use, stress, and healthcare access and quality.

The priority tribes and counties include:

• Marinette
• Menominee (Shawano)
• Milwaukee
• Oconto​

• Oneida
• Racine
• Sawyer
• Vilas
• Walworth

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• Lac Courte Oreilles Band
• Lac Du Flambeau Band
• Oneida Nation
• Menominee Tribe

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Partners

Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, Inc.
Wisconsin Women's Health Foundation 
YWCA of Southeastern Wisconsin

Team

Leadership
Stacy Young, PhD
Associate Professor,
Family & Community Medicine,
Interim Director, Community Engagement,
Interim Senior Associate Dean,
Community Engagement 

Medical College of Wisconsin​

David Frazer, MPH
Associate Director
​
Center for Urban Population Health

​Tim Meister, MA
Program Manager
​
Medical College of Wisconsin