Community Based Participatory Research

The partnership between The Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and Siteman Cancer Center investigates rural cancer disparities and ways to help educate, train, and implement effective strategies to reduce the disparities seen in rural communities.

This line of research strives to engage all members of the community throughout the research process to help navigate the healthcare process.

This project focuses on engaging community members in the research process by providing fellows with the knowledge and skills to implement public health interventions in their own neighborhoods.

This project will address colorectal cancer mortality rates in rural Southern Illinois by  improving the screening process and follow-up for patients who have a positive fecal blood test (FOBT, FIT).

The St. Louis Patient Research Advisory Board was founded by and consists of CRFT program alumni who have completed a 15-week training program on research methods and are certified to conduct research with human subjects by the Human Research Protections Office at the Washington University School of Medicine. The PRAB is designed to help investigators with community-engaged or community-based research proposals/projects by having community members review proposals and give feedback.

The PLUS Research Network is a multi-site network designed to develop the evidence base for future clinical trials to prevent the development and progression of lower urinary tract symptoms in women and girls. Current projects include a qualitative focus group study, the development of new instruments to measure bladder health, systematic reviews of the literature, and analyses of existing study data to better understand bladder health and factors that contribute to the development and progression of lower urinary tract symptoms.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) helps give community members voice in academic research. These projects evaluated current and past CBPR projects to discovery future best practices.

The mission of Siteman Cancer Center’s Program for the Elimination of Cancer Disparities (PECaD) is to create a national model for eliminating local and regional disparities in cancer education, prevention and treatment. Through a community advisory committee and community partnerships, PECaD works with community representatives to find solutions that reduce disparities.

The long-term goal of this collaboration between Dr. Drake and The St. Louis Mens Group Against Cancer is to be able to identify patients with increased risk for dying of prostate cancer while they are still treatable.

Alumni of the first Community Research Fellows Training (CRFT) program created this project, which focused on identifying the health needs and concerns of homeless women ages 45-64 living in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Nonadherence can have significant negative health effects for the individual and contribute to increases in hospitalization, healthcare costs, and mortality. Adherence is a complex issue, but cost and affordability of medication is a common and critical barrier.The short-term objective is to identify how patients and healthcare providers approach affordability and adherence and use those data to refine and pilot test an intervention promoting patient-provider discussion about cost, affordability, and adherence. The long- term objective is to deliver interventions to reduce cost-related nonadherence.

This CRFT Alumni project, Unemployment and Mental Health Literacy among African American Mothers in St. Louis County, examined levels of stress experienced by unemployed African American mothers and whether educational materials about the effects of stress related to unemployment improved their recognition of stress, stress management and knowledge of when to seek services.