Overview: How RCINJ’s CHECoE Team Can Help You

The Cancer Health Equity Center of Excellence (CHECoE) team is dedicated to improving the lives of the diverse, underserved populations that reside here and advancing cancer health equity across the state by utilizing our community partners, Community Cancer Action Board (CCAB), and Community Scientists (CS) to uphold our mission.

We’re here to help you engage with communities in New Jersey as required by NCI. We strive to help researchers effectively communicate with lay audiences and facilitate community interaction to get input on how to improve their science.

Our purpose, and the purpose of this Community Researcher Guide and process is to:

• Provide opportunities to facilitate community dialogue with you by bringing together voices and talents from our communities to help inform your research and provide input that may better serve those communities.

• Offer support to researchers like you for obtaining feedback and insight from community members who are relevant to your research interests to lead to better, stronger, and more impactful science.

• Assist you in documenting how community input changes research approaches/ focus for NCI reporting

In doing so, COE would like to know what impact it has on your research. We offer confidential and personalized mentoring programs with Community Scientists, COE staff, and Community Partners to help researchers develop comfort and confidence while engaging in research-community feedback. If you are a researcher interested in RCINJ-COE’s services, you can complete a Research Support Request Form directly on our website.

If you are interested in collaborating with the CHECoE team, the website houses a request form for education, both community-based and professional, and for educational materials that are available for dissemination while doing outreach in the community or during educational workshops. Additionally, the COE website also has information on our Community Partners, the different educational programs, and workshops that our educators can host virtually or in-person, as well as a schedule of upcoming events hosted by or in collaboration with RCINJ.

6. Submit feedback to the COE team on how it went. Was there impact for your research? What worked well? What other resources or support do you need?

1. Review this Community Research Guide

2. Have a one-on-one needs assessment discussion with (COE Specialist) to determine what approach will work best with the research you are planning or conducting