Responding to a Community's Concern: A Comparison of Breast Cancer Characteristics and Initial Treatment in Three Selected North Carolina Counties.

A 2007 national report identified North Carolina's Edgecombe County as having among the highest breast cancer incidence and mortality rates nationally, motivating the initiation of a task force and other local efforts to address the problem. The goal of this study is to examine county breast cancer characteristics before and after the report, including whether geographic variation may mask racial disparities in this majority African American community. With guidance from community partners, breast cancer cases from 2000 to 2012 in Edgecombe, Nash, and Orange Counties (N = 2,641) were obtained from the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry.

Peer Connect for African American breast cancer survivors and caregivers: a train-the-trainer approach for peer support.

Racial disparities in breast cancer survivorship are a major concern nationally. How survivors cope with cancer and re-frame their lives is a critical part of survivorship. Community-academic research partnerships may facilitate access to much-needed psychosocial support for African American survivors and caregivers in rural areas, but drivers of successful intervention implementation are not well understood.