SCOPY Awardees from Duke: Angelo Moore, PhD, RN; Julius Wilder, MD, PhD; Tristan Evans; Ping Zhang; Juan Sanchez, MD; Tzu-Hao Lee, MD. (photo by Jessica Hyland)
Duke GI/DCI/Durham Cty Wins Social Media SCOPY Award
The Durham County Colorectal Cancer Screening Workgroup, Duke Division of Gastroenterology, and Duke Cancer Institute received a SCOPY Award from the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) for "Best Culturally Inclusive Social Media Event” for their entry “Duke Cancer Institute Facebook Live Event for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.”
The SCOPY Award recognizes the achievements of groups in their community engagement, education, and awareness efforts for colorectal cancer prevention.
“We are inspired by your commitment to raising colorectal cancer awareness during a difficult time and wish you, your family, colleagues, and community well during a challenging year,” wrote Becky Abel, M.Ed., Manager, Communications & Member Publications, American College of Gastroenterology, in her email to the event planners and participants announcing their selection to receive the award. “All of the SCOPY submissions for 2020 will be featured in a booklet shared with the members of the College. Though we cannot safely convene in person this year, the College will continue to honor innovative and impactful community education programs to raise awareness of colorectal cancer.”
The Project
The Durham County Colorectal Cancer Screening Workgroup developed and planned an afternoon of four different public conversations with providers and a patient on colorectal cancer screening to be live-streamed on Facebook on March 2, 2020 — two in English, one in Spanish, and one in Chinese.
The Durham County Colorectal (CRC) Cancer Screening Workgroup is comprised of Angelo Moore, Ph.D., RN (Program Manager, Duke Cancer Institute Office of Health Equity), Chelsea Hawkins, MPH, MCHES (then Public Health Education Specialist, Durham County Department of Public Health), Willa Robinson Allen, MPH, MHED, MCHES (Program Manager, Health Promotion and Wellness, Durham County Department of Public Health) and Elaine Hart-Brothers, MD, MPH, FACP (Founding Director, Community Health Coalition, Inc.)
Chief of the Duke Division of Gastroenterology Andrew Muir, MD, helped facilitate securing the medical providers for this project, and Aleecia Smith, PhD (Manager, Communications and Public Relations, Durham County Department of Public Health) and Jessica Hyland (Communications Strategist, Duke Cancer Institute Center for Prostate & Urologic Cancers and then Social Media Strategist, DCI) devised a communications strategy, including simulcasting each of the events on both the Durham County Department of Public Health Facebook page and the Duke Cancer Institute Facebook page.
Watch the Conversations
Angelo Moore, Ph.D., RN, interviews Duke gastroenterologist Julius Wilder, MD, Ph.D. (Assistant Professor of Medicine, Duke Division of Gastroenterology) on colorectal cancer and the importance of screening. (in English) Then, Moore spoke with colorectal cancer survivor Tristan Evans on his experience being screened and treated for cancer at Duke. (in English) There have been 832 views, to date, of this broadcast,
Chelsea Hawkins, MPH, MCHES, (Public Health Education Specialist, Durham County Department of Public Health) discusses colon cancer awareness and screening with Duke gastroenterologist Juan Sanchez, MD. (in Spanish) There have been 763 views, to date, of this broadcast.
Ping Zhang (Asian American Community Liason) discussed colon cancer awareness and screening with Duke gastroenterologist Tzu-Hao Lee, MD. (in Chinese) There have been 390 views, to date, of this broadcast.
The official awards ceremony will take place during the American College of Gastroenterology’s Annual Scientific Meeting, on October 24 via the ACG 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting virtual platform.
Related News
In August 2023, a team of volunteers led by Trinitia Cannon, MD (third from left), Leda Scearce, CCC-SLP, MM, MS, and Dina Abouelella, MPH, which also included Tammara Watts, MD, PhD (center) and Katharine Ciarrocca, DMD, MSEd, partnered with North Raleigh International Baptist Church and Duke Raleigh Hospital to offer head and neck cancer screenings. Dozens of families from the Cedar Creek Apartment Complex community came out for the free screenings, education, and games, and Duke Raleigh Hospital donated backpacks full of school supplies.
TheDuke University School of Medicine Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences (HNS&CS) recently launched Project CHECKERS (Community Head and NEck Cancer Knowledge, Engagement, Research and Screening) a Duke Cancer Institute-funded pilot project to bring head and neck cancer resources and education to the broader Durham community.
Led by DCI head and neck surgeon Trinitia Cannon, MD, an associate professor in the Department, the project will be the Department’s first community-based participatory research project and the first such head and neck cancer screening and cancer prevention education project in North Carolina.
Evolving Community Research
The Project CHECKERS team will use a mixed methodology, which includes traditional surveys and screenings as well as interviews and focus groups.
One of their community partners will be the Cedar Creek Apartment Complex community in North Raleigh. Many of these families are refugees — from at least seven different countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East — who speak Farsi, French, Swahili, Arabic, and other languages. They are building new lives in North Carolina, in a culture and language that is new to many of them. As is the case with many similar communities, their healthcare needs often go unmet.
The investigators believe that, compared to traditional methods, mixed-method research is an improved way to establish a community partnership, highlight gaps in the community’s knowledge and risk perception, and pave the way for successful future health interventions.
According to co-PI Nosayaba (Nosa) Osazuwa-Peters, BDS, MPH, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Project CHECKERS takes an important step in improving community engagement.
“Traditional research is very systematic, very top-down. The researchers have knowledge and decide what they believe the community needs. But these outside scientific experts do not know the values, the culture, the knowledge, or the risks inherent in that community,” he explained.
For example, traditional surveys restrict participants to answering either yes or no; for many people, that binary does not tell a complete story.
“Project CHECKERS will help us understand the lived experiences of people in these communities,” added Osazuwa-Peters. “We’ll learn about context, and we’ll learn to ask questions that allow community members to express themselves. We’ll get responses we would never get based on yes or no.”
Building a Partnership
Project CHECKERS kicked off this fall with focus groups and interviews with community members facilitated by Laura Fish, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in Family Medicine and Community Health, Duke University School of Medicine, and program director for the Behavioral Health and Survey Research Core (a DCI shared resource). An advisory board will provide feedback from both clinical and community perspectives.
Lessons learned from these conversations will help the team develop a knowledge and risk factor survey that will be administered during two head and neck cancer screening events with the community in 2024.
The CHECKERS team will also recruit providers outside the department to participate in these events to address other health concerns in the community such as primary care, mental health, and women’s health.
The long-term goal of Project CHECKERS is to show the benefits of tailoring head and neck cancer screening programs to the communities being served, and how that personalization can improve prevention, early detection, and overall survival in high-risk individuals who have limited access to care.
Noted Osazuwa-Peters, “The mixed-methods framework helps us understand not just whether an intervention works, but how, why, and for whom.”
Community Partners
Another plus to mixed-methods research is its appeal to community partners who might otherwise be hesitant to work with researchers.
“The design places a high value on the stories behind the numbers,” explained Cannon, “so these projects are especially attractive to community partners such as faith-based organizations, whose priority is improving practice and outcomes, more so than research and advancing knowledge.”
Project CHECKERS will provide a valuable bridge between Duke and the North Raleigh International Baptist Church (NRIBC), which ministers to a large immigrant community. NRIBC’s Pastor, Patrick Warutere, invited Duke to participate in the church’s inaugural Health and Dignity for All Fair in Raleigh in 2022. Cannon and CHECKERS co-PI Leda Scearce,CCC-SLP, MM, MS, a Duke speech pathologist and director of Community Engagement for the Department of HNS&CS, recruited nurses, medical students, and resident volunteers to provide HNC screenings for the event.
“We immediately felt a kinship with NRIBC’s Pastor Patrick Warutere and his leadership team,” shared Searce. “By the end of the day, we knew we wanted to continue to work together and set up a meeting the following week.”
Duke HNS&CS and the NRIBC team worked closely to develop the research plan and ensure that the goals and expectations of each group were aligned and transparent.
“That relationship with NRIBC has enabled us to incorporate the community’s perspectives into the development of Project CHECKERS,” said Scearce. “Our aim was to amplify the assets and expertise of the community members themselves.”
Cannon anticipates that Project CHECKERS will become a framework for future projects.
“We are looking forward to similar initiatives in hearing health for older adults, right-hemisphere stroke awareness, and more.”
Breast surgical oncologist and Mary and Deryl Hart Distinguished Professor of Surgery Eun-Sil Shelley Hwang, MD, MHS, with Oluwadamilola "Lola" Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS, FACS, in early 2020.
Dr. Hwang was Chief of Breast Surgery at Duke at that time and Dr. Fayanju was an assistant professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Oncology. Dr. Fayanju is currently Chief of the Breast Surgery Division at Penn Medicine.
A study initiated at Duke University School of Medicine lays bare significant racial and gender disparities in America’s surgical leadership.
Of the 2,165 faculty members included across 154 departments, men overwhelmingly claimed the top spots in surgical leadership, making up 85.9% of department chairs, 68.4% of vice chairs, and a staggering 87% of division chiefs.
What’s more a mere 8.9% of these leadership roles were filled by those from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups.
While women made a modest showing as vice chairs at 31.6%, they remained underrepresented elsewhere. Many of these women and those from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups were clustered in roles linked to diversity and faculty development, which might not pave the way to top department positions.
The study in JAMA Surgery — led by Oluwadamilola “Lola” M. Fayanju, MD — stands out because the research team of surgeons, trainees, and biostatisticians looked in detail at different leadership roles and the implications these disparities have for the pipeline to department chair.
CONTINUE READING at the Duke University School of Medicine Newsroom
