Disseminating Research Findings to the Community: Breast Cancer Advocates Conduct Education Forums

Abstract

Abstract

All persons in a community deserve the right to access accurate information to make choices about their health and the health of their families. Unfortunately, the lay public typically receives information about the latest scientific research through the mass media, which often presents a condensed, biased version of research. Direct access to researchers, on the other hand, is empowering. One way to provide the public with direct access to the work conducted by researchers and the results of this work is through educational forums like those conducted by the Cincinnati Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Centers (BCERC). The four national BCERCs support transdisciplinary teams of scientists, clinicians, and breast cancer advocates to study the impact of prenatal-to-adult environmental exposures that may predispose a woman to breast cancer. Each center was tasked with ensuring that the views and concerns of the breast cancer advocate community were heard and that the research findings generated by the centers were disseminated to the public. This article discusses the educational forums the Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC) arm of the Cincinnati BCERC held from 2003–2010. These forums offered an innovative, alternative method for disseminating scientific information to the lay public and achieving the potential for environmental justice in a specific community. In addition, attendees were encouraged to use the information from the forums to participate in activism and influence policy change. The experiences of the Cincinnati COTC can help serve as a model for other community groups to disseminate complicated research into understandable and usable information for the lay public.