Community Collaboration - COE - Wake Forest School of Medicine
While cancer can affect anyone at anytime, we believe that everyone should have an equal chance of surviving cancer. Collaboration is absolutely essential and at the core of the work done at Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center. We utilize cross-sector communication to help our patients and community connect to the resources they need. By enhancing the Comprehensive Cancer Center community collaborations, we are able to accelerate the implementation of programs/initiatives designed to reduce the cancer burden and disparities in our CA.

Our partners allow for consistent feedback and bidirectional communication to increase community capacity to improve health and well-being.

Outreach and Engagement Model 

The goal of the COE is to develop programming and implement cancer control strategies to address the cancer burden within the Comprehensive Cancer Center catchment area with a particular focus on cancers that disproportionately impact the Comprehensive Cancer Center's diverse and traditionally underserved and under-resourced populations. These programs support basic, translational and clinical research with the goal of improving both clinical care and population health

  • A key strategy of the COE to ensure research programs impact to the CA is to engage communities and foster relationship building that helps build a foundation for robust cancer disparities research program that produces broader national and global impact.
  • We have established a Community Advisory Board (CAB). The overall mission is to improve the health of the community across the cancer continuum. The CAB is comprised of diverse members of the community that helps to assist in identifying community priorities, needs, interests and resources, and provides input on cancer center activities. Members of the CAB include faith-based community leaders, clinicians, as well as staff from the YMCA, American Cancer Society, and our local HBCU. They assist with the development of strategies to improve cancer awareness and support patients throughout their cancer journey. The CAB encompasses key stakeholders, including laypeople and representatives from departments of public health, educators, and community based organizations. They will serve a key role in the design and implementation of future community engagement and involved throughout the process through routinely scheduled CAB meetings.

Policy and Advocacy

The COE is focused on promoting policies at the national, state, and local levels to reduce cancer burden and disparities. Policy change is needed to enable adequate focus on health maintenance and cancer prevention. The Comprehensive Cancer Center strives to enhance community collaborations to accelerate research and implementation of programs and policy designed to reduce cancer burden and disparities. This is done through key activities such as expanding community engagement, building community research capacity, developing and maintaining bidirectional communication between patients, the communities and researchers. At the statewide level, the Comprehensive Cancer Center has representative membership within The North Carolina Advisory Committee on Cancer Coordination and Control (ACCCC). ACCCC is a legislatively mandated committee of diverse members with the mission of facilitating the reduction of cancer incidence and mortality for all North Carolinians.

AYA Program

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Brenner Children’s and Atrium Health Levine Children’s Unite Pediatric Heart Programs
An example of our COE programming is the Comprehensive Cancer Center and Brenner’s Children’s hospital have partnered to bring together the Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer programming to the institution. The Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program is situated within the COE at the Comprehensive Cancer Center and brings AYA-specific programming to the institution. The annual AYA Oncology Symposium organized by a collaboration of AYA programs across the state including the Comprehensive Cancer Center, UNC Lineberger and Duke Cancer Institute, has brought national experts in AYA cancer care and well-being to health care providers and AYA survivors in the region.

This will enable further expansion of the Comprehensive Cancer Center research and capacity in this population.