UPenn Prevention Research Center Awarded $6.5M Grant for Public Health Research
October 23, 2024
The University of Pennsylvania Prevention Research Center (UPenn PRC) has been awarded a $6.5 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support the center’s work for another five years. Co-led by PC3I Associate Director Oluwadamilola “Lola” Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS along with Perelman School of Medicine Professors Karen Glanz, PhD, MPH and Meghan Lane-Fall, MD, MSHP, the UPenn PRC was established in 2014 from a $4.3 million grant from the CDC and is one of 20 CDC-funded centers in the United States focused on community-based prevention and public health research.
The grant will fund UPenn PRC’s continued work in Philadelphia communities to develop, test, and evaluate solutions to public health problems, with a particular focus on cancer. PRC’s signature project seeks to improve communication between clinicians and older patients with early-stage breast, rectal, or lung cancer. Titled “BEACON” (Best Case/Worst Case Equity-centered Adaptation to Communicate with Older oNcology patients), this hybrid effectiveness-implementation study will assess the impact of the Best Case/Worst Case decision-making framework, a shared decision-making tool designed to help patients make treatment decisions based on what is important to them.
“By working with a great multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team to adapt the Best Case/Worst Case framework among diverse cancer patients in Philadelphia, we have a real opportunity to better align patients’ goals and values with the type of care and post-treatment follow-up their disease warrants,” Fayanju said. “Our hope is that this project will improve racial and ethnic disparities in shared decision making and guideline-concordant care among older patients with new early-stage cancers.”
Other individuals from PC3I involved with Upenn PRC include PC3I Associate Director Tamara J. Cadet, PhD, LICSW, MPH and PC3I Faculty Anne Marie McCarthy, PhD. Read more in the press release from Penn Medicine.
