"Redes en Acción" Latino Cancer program

Receives funding expanding efforts fighting Cancer

Over the past five years, Redes En Acción has formed the most extensive collaboration of organizations ever assembled to address cancer disparities in Latino populations. Now, under the National Cancer Institute's new Community Networks Program initiative, the Redes En Acción (Networks in Action) program will receive funding to expand its efforts to fight cancer in Latino communities in San Diego and other sites throughout the United States.

Supported by a new five-year, $7.2 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant, Redes En Acción: The National Latino Cancer Research Network is coordinated in the Southwest Region of the U.S. by Gregory A. Talavera, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, San Diego State University.

The program is coordinated nationally at Baylor College of Medicine in San Antonio and Houston, Texas, and directed by Amelie G. Ramirez, DrPH, Professor of Medicine.

"We are excited that we will be able to continue the work we started over ten years ago with our national network," said Dr. Talavera. "We can feel the momentum and benefit that we are providing to our southwest region."

The $95 million NCI Community Networks Program (CNP) initiative is aimed at reducing cancer deaths among minority and underserved populations through community-based cancer prevention and control activities in geographically and culturally diverse areas of the country.

Redes En Acción is one of up to 25 projects to be funded by the initiative targeting cancer disparities in Hispanics/Latinos, African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asians, Hawaiian Natives and other Pacific Islanders, and the rural poor.

"It is extremely important that we maintain our momentum in these vital areas and continue and expand our efforts to apply what we've learned about cancer prevention and control in the community," said Dr. Ramírez.

Under the new CNP initiative, Redes En Acción will maintain the infrastructure developed under the SPN initiative and expand its network activities as part of NCI's ongoing efforts to understand why some population groups - often minorities and the poor - have higher cancer rates than others, and to eliminate disparities by involving local communities in education, research and training.

"To win the war against cancer we need to better understand the areas where we know that people are dying at higher rates, and we need to find ways to target these communities with culturally relevant approaches," said Harold Freeman, MD, director of NCI's Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, which oversees the Community Networks Program.

For more information about Redes En Acción, please visit:

www.redesenaccion.org