OUTREACH CORE – ABSTRACT Cancer incidence and mortality rates for racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved and vulnerable populations are substantially higher in Chicago than the national average for most cancers (Illinois State Cancer Registry). Addressing these disparities demands culturally and linguistically relevant community-driven approaches. In 2015, a consortium comprised of community members and three major academic institutions in Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University (NU-LCC), secured NCI U54 funding to establish the Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (ChicagoCHEC), which aims to foster rigorous and meaningful research, education, training, and community outreach/engagement to advance health equity. Through the original U54 award, the Outreach Core identified community needs, and provided leadership and programmatic support for community-based cancer education, engagement, and outreach activities. In this renewal, the proposed activities of the ChicagoCHEC Outreach Core will build upon the existing strengths, prior and ongoing work, accomplishments, and lessons learned from the first U54 award to elevate ChicagoCHEC’s collective impact on reducing cancer inequities. A major area of the Outreach Core’s focus for the next five years will be to develop targeted cancer support efforts for underserved and vulnerable populations. These include the following non-mutually exclusive groups: people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, men of color, and low-income cancer survivors. Proposed community engagement approaches span the cancer continuum, encompassing prevention, screening and early detection, community-based education, and cancer treatment and survivorship. Specific aims of the Outreach Core are to: (1) Foster community partnerships and conduct ongoing needs assessment to identify new and innovative areas of opportunity, including outreach research, for community-engaged activities that will reach individuals from health disparities populations; (2) Implement outreach and education activities across the cancer continuum; (3) Foster opportunities for building cancer health equity research capacity among community partners, faculty, and students; (4) Plan, implement, and evaluate NCI National Outreach Network activities locally; and (5) Rigorously evaluate achievement and progress of the Outreach Core’s stated aims using a comprehensive evaluation strategy. A highly effective and diverse tri- institutional leadership team with complementary expertise will lead these activities, supported by experienced Community Health Educators with strong clinical and community networks. A Community Steering Committee will guide the development and implementation of the proposed outreach and engagement activities. The Outreach Core will leverage each ChicagoCHEC partner academic institution’s...