Project Summary
The rural Mississippi Delta region has unique assets and disadvantages related to its culture and heritage. Favorable health outcomes are compromised by limitations in healthcare access, and economic and social well-being, among others. Delta citizens can contribute as PCORI stakeholders to developing approaches for PCOR/CER participation and dissemination that build on cultural strengths. Among those strengths is a grass-roots network that aims to reduce disparities in cancer mortality through awareness, education, and advocacy. This engagement project builds on work of the Mississippi Network for Cancer Control and Prevention to discover how PCOR is received by stakeholders through the network and other means, how network community health advisors disseminate PCOR, and how research capacity-building activities with Delta stakeholder groups strengthen their capacity for engagement in PCOR.
The projected outputs from this project are determination through focus groups of methods perceived by stakeholder groups in rural, high poverty Mississippi Delta counties to be the most effective for the dissemination and uptake of patient-centered outcomes/comparative effectiveness research findings; and increased capacity, interest in, and trust for PCOR/CER research participation by African-American Delta residents.
Project collaborators include a community health advisor; Mississippi Network for Cancer Control and Prevention; Fannie Lou Hammer Cancer Foundation; Mississippi Delta community member participants; and the University of Southern Mississippi.
PCORI Stories
Improving Health in the Mississippi Delta through Powerful Engagement
This feature story looks at the how a cancer awareness and prevention program in the Mississippi Delta has been able to expand its reach within rural, largely African-American communities facing high cancer rates.