SUMMARY The University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) Partnership is primed for “Bridging the Divides: Innovations to Address Gaps in Cancer Disparities Research, Education, Outreach and Infrastructure.” Our goal is to pursue Partnership activities and research that will bridge the divides in cancer disparities science, research education, and outreach through innovative research, training, and practice, serving as models for translation at the state and national level. The Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity (PACHE) program itself is a prime example of bridged divides: partnerships formed between institutions have enhanced the education of underrepresented population groups and provided well-established cancer centers with the necessary resources and research infrastructure to address cancer disparities. The specific aims of the UMass Boston–DF/HCC Partnership are to: 1) Advance Partnership transdisciplinary cancer and cancer health disparities research programs reflecting the theme “Bridging the Divides”; 2) Develop educational experiences for students and trainees from a diverse population typically underrepresented in biomedical careers; 3) Promote hiring and retention of diverse scholars, particularly those from underrepresented populations, by leveraging institutional resources; 4) Bridge research-community divides through innovative platforms: forming and engaging networks of community-based organizations to advance outreach drawing on state of the science from dissemination and implementation sciences (D&I); 5) Develop cutting-edge approaches to address data-absenteeism, the lack of representation of underserved groups in population-, community-, and genomics-based cancer and cancer disparities datasets and projects; and 6) Promote sustainability of partnership activities by reinforcing institutional support and grant matching with NIH- mechanisms and other sources of government, foundation, and philanthropic support.

PROJECT NARRATIVE The University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMass Boston) and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) Partnership is committed to further developing a shared rigorous and collaborative transdisciplinary cancer and disparities-related research program that is primed for “Bridging the Divides: Innovations to Address Gaps in Cancer Disparities Research, Education, Outreach and Infrastructure.” Sophisticated research projects are proposed across several areas of basic biomedical and population sciences that will employ evidence and methods to converge upon and impact cancer and cancer health disparities at multiple levels of analysis. These projects, together with state-of-the-art Outreach and Research Education Cores and creative Research Design and Analysis Core and Genomics Cores, will serve to build research capacity and infrastructure at UMass Boston, expand the cancer disparities platform and community outreach programs at DF/HCC; and make, at an elevated level, significant advances to the science of cancer control.