This month, the White House announced an award of $50 million to launch the Persistent Poverty Initiative. Coordinated by the National Cancer Institute, the Persistent Poverty Initiative is the first major program to address the structural and institutional factors of persistent poverty in the context of cancer. These awards create five new Centers for Cancer Control Research in Persistent Poverty Areas that will advance key priorities of the Administration’s Cancer Moonshot. The awards include:
Acres Homes Cancer Prevention Collaboration at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston,
The Center for Cancer Control in Persistent Poverty Areas at University of Alabama at Birmingham,
- The Upstream Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto,
- The Center for Social Capital at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University, New York City,
- HOPE & CAIRHE 2gether at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
ATS Research Advocacy Committee Vice Chair Indu A. Ayappa, PhD, notes, “Evaluating the impact of interventions aimed at social determinants of health on cancer outcomes is fundamental to the mission of the ATS. These awards address multiple topics of relevance to the ATS membership.”