Community Service
Community Advisory Board
Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center
Milwaukee’s African-American residents develop cancer at much higher rates than their Caucasian counterparts, and are much more likely to die from cancers. That’s why the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center Community Advisory Board’s work is so important.
The CAB is a board of community members committed to eliminating cancer health disparities in Milwaukee through prevention and screening, community education and outreach, disparities research studies and minority clinical trials participation.
An educational event planned by the CAB reached more than 600 students at Milwaukee High School of the Arts. Those students can now deliver messages of prevention, screening and early diagnosis to difficult-to-reach Milwaukee communities.
In collaboration with MCW faculty, the CAB developed a robust Community Education and Outreach program. In the past three years, the program has reached more than 8,000 individuals through 150 events. This includes participation in a national Cancer Moonshot Summit and ongoing projects resulting from the summit.
The CAB also initiated the highly successful Community Conversations series. This series has already engaged more than 600 people from underserved populations in conversations with researchers and clinicians about difficult topics such as the African-American community’s mistrust of the medical community and lack of participation in clinical research, using movies and books about Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee experiments to facilitate the conversation.
