Establishment of an Inclusive Cancer Care Research Equity (iCCaRE) for Black Men Consortium

Rationale and Objective: According to the American Cancer Society, one in seven Black men will get prostate cancer. In 2019, 5,350 Black men died of prostate cancer. The good news is that deaths from prostate cancer have dropped to about half in Black men since 1993. The bad news is that Black men continue to be extremely affected by prostate cancer compared to any other racial or ethnic group. In addition, prostate cancer affects Black men globally, regardless of their country of birth. Fighting prostate cancer in the Black community is difficult because many factors contribute to the problem. To conquer prostate cancer, we will need to pull together all of our knowledge, experiences, and resources and include all stakeholders. This is the reason we have brought together prostate cancer survivors, advocates, researchers, and health care providers to form the inclusive Cancer Care Research Equity (iCCaRE) for Black Men Consortium. The objectives of the iCCaRE for Black men Consortium is to fight prostate cancer in the Black community all over the world by:

1. Conducting research that will let us understand issues that affect the health outcomes of prostate cancer patients. These factors could be what we are born with (genetics) or factors that have to do with where we are born, live, work or play.

2. Developing programs that will help Black men to better cope with prostate cancer diagnosis, make informed decisions about prostate cancer, and provide them with skills and access to care to better deal with prostate cancer.

Consortium Aims: To meet the objectives that we outlined above, we have proposed five aims for this application:

1. Bring together our expertise and resources to develop a strong program for the iCCaRE Consortium that includes leadership, research training, community education, community outreach, and program evaluation, as well as support for the Consortium research projects from research development to design, data collection, analyses, and dissemination.

2. Through three pilot projects, plan, develop, and test the acceptability of three patient-centered programs that focus on improving the experiences of Black prostate cancer patients from diagnosis to treatment and survivorship care using computer-generated human support. This includes a patient-centered home care to improve the health of Black men with advanced prostate cancer, as well as their families and communities.

3. Through two pilot projects, try to understand how U.S. Black men are different from Black immigrants in the U.S. and West Africans on personal factors that affect the health outcomes of prostate cancer patients. This includes studying how prostate cancer affect the mental health of prostate cancer survivors.

4. Implement training programs for upcoming researchers and community education programs for community advocates.

5. Use our Cancer Research Link© platform to publicly share the research results from our Consortium and other consortia with Black men, including Black Veterans. Achieving our aims will prepare us to further develop, refine, and confirm the appropriateness and usefulness of the programs that we develop for Black prostate cancer patients in real life settings. Working closely with prostate cancer survivors, our goal is to provide immediate support for Black men from the time of prostate cancer diagnosis throughout the survivorship phase. In the next phase of our application, we will conduct research that will support the acceptance of our prostate cancer care and survivorship programs by Black prostate cancer patients.

Applicability of the Research: The focus of our Consortium is to provide appropriate care and support for Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer by translating our research to programs that will directly benefit them. Through our research, we will understand multiple factors that affect the quality of life of Black prostate cancer survivors and develop solutions to decrease the burden of this disease in Black communities. Our consortium will improve the quality of life of Black men through programs that will support them at the time of prostate cancer diagnosis, provide telehealth care to treat them at home, and provide programs to improve their survivorship care. In addition, we will understand and address the health differences seen in U.S. Black men by comparing them to foreign-born Blacks in the U.S. and West African men to see how what we are born with (genetics) and where we are born, live, or work affect prostate cancer health outcomes, including mental health. The Consortium will help Black men, including U.S.-born Black men, Caribbean-born Black men in the U.S., African-born Black men in the U.S., and West African men outside the U.S. through the projects that our team will conduct. Although we will examine the intermediate benefits and acceptability of three interventions, we expect to see patient-related outcomes in the second phase of HEROICA program, which would be in about 5 years. The interventions that we will develop will have clinical applications at clinic settings to support newly diagnosed Black men, support patients to make informed decision about their treatments, and help them to maintain a survivorship care plan. Ultimately, this will lead to better survival for Black men and help reduce the prostate cancer mortality disparities experienced by this population.