Practical Solutions to Better Engage Cancer Professionals with Communities of Color

Dr. Sanford Jeames is currently serving as the Coordinator of Health Science Programs at Eastside Memorial Early College High School in Austin, Texas; and is an Adjunct Professor at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas.  

He is Chair-Elect for the ASCO Health Equity Committee, and has memberships in the Society of Urological Surgical Associates (SUNA), American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO). He is currently serving as a panel member of Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) and has served on the Clinical Trials Advisory Panel for Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). He is Merit Protocol Reviewer for PCORI, member of the Patient Advocate Steering Committee (PASC) and Cancer Care Delivery Research Steering Committee (CCDRSC). Jeames is a manuscript reviewer for the Urologic Nursing Journal and the Journal for the Poor and Underserved. 

Lailea Noel is an assistant professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. 

Noel’s research investigates the social and economic conditions that contribute to lower cancer treatment utilization and higher mortality rates in marginalized communities, particularly communities of color, and communities within residentially segregated urban and rural neighborhoods. She has a passion for conducting community-based participatory research and has a wealth of experience engaging communities, social scientists and medical professionals in such research partnerships. Her research interest and approach are informed by the two decades she spent as an oncology social work administrator at prestigious organizations — including the American Cancer Society and University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center — prior to pursuing her Ph.D. 

During her doctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Noel participated in a five-year, community-based participatory research project in an area with high rates of poverty and the worst cancer mortality rates in metropolitan St. Louis. Her dissertation work, supported by an American Cancer Society Doctoral Training Grant in Oncology Social Work, explored the experiences of African American women in St. Louis, who had not started treatment for breast cancer six-months to two years following diagnosis. Since she joined the NYU Silver faculty in 2016, and was the 2018-19 Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. 

Dr. Nadine J. Barrett is a medical sociologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Community and Family Medicine, within Duke University’s School of Medicine. She is the inaugural director of the Office of Health Equity and Disparities at the Duke Cancer Institute and serves as the director of the Duke Community Engagement Core, within the Center for Community and Population Health Improvement. A health equity and stakeholder engagement strategist, Dr. Barrett applies her expertise across three interrelated areas: 1) linking vulnerable communities to health services and research, 2) leveraging community and health system assets and services to align priorities and improve community and population health, and 3) convening diverse stakeholders to develop community and patient-centered programs, services, and research.

In 2017, she accepted an ACCC Innovator Award on behalf of Duke Cancer Institute for its initiative, Come Together: A Health Disparities & Equity Cancer Program Built on Community Collaboration. She is the recipient of several awards, including the American Sociology Association’s Minority Fellowship Award, an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Health Services Research, and the MLK Southern Christian Leadership Conference Drum Major for Justice Award. Her national appointments include the PCORI Health Disparities Advisory Panel Board and the ACCC Board of Trustees. Dr. Barrett is both passionate about and committed to achieving health equity.

Dr. Barrett has several funded projects including Project PLACE (Population Level Approaches to Cancer Elimination), funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is a three-pronged research project designed to implement three robust mechanisms to inform the health equity strategic direction of the Duke Cancer Institute over the next five to eight years. Project PLACE is a highly intensive community engagement model and platform designed to shape robust scholarly productivity, partnered research and community programs to improve population health. She is also the Duke PI (subcontract) of a national Susan G. Komen pipeline training grant on translational research in inflammatory breast cancer and community-engaged research. Dr. Barrett also co-directs the NCI-funded Cancer Research and Education Program Core of the NCCU/DCI Translational Health Disparities Research Program which incorporates specified training in minority accrual in clinical research—a program she developed within the Duke Cancer Institute titled, “Just Ask.”