CANCER PREVENTION AND CONTROL PROGRAM: PROJECT SUMMARY The Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Massey Cancer Center (MCC) first introduced its Cancer Prevention and Control (CPC) Program within the Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) in 1991. The CPC Program has matured into a highly multidisciplinary nexus of investigators, including population health as well as clinical and basic scientists, and the program continues its emphasis on identifying and mitigating cancer risks. However, since the last CCSG renewal, the CPC Program has recruited multiple new experts in survivorship research, further expanding its impact across the cancer care continuum. The Program is highly focused on addressing MCC’s and the community’s priority disease concerns – lung, gastrointestinal, breast, and prostate cancers – as well as two lifestyles or behaviors significantly driving the cancer burden (tobacco control and obesity prevention). CPC research aligns well with the MCC’s Community-to-Bench framework and its mission, goals, and strategic plans, and the program leads Center efforts actively engaging the community in research. Furthermore, the Center-wide emphasis on reducing disparities is exemplified by many CPC members’ efforts to understand and address inequities among racial/ethnic as well as rural/urban communities, and notably where the two intersect. For instance, within MCC’s catchment area, it is the rural Virginia communities with majority-minority populations of Blacks/African Americans being reported among the nation’s cancer hot spots. Led by Oxana G. Palesh, PhD and Victoria J. Findley PhD, the CPC Program comprises 44 scientists representing 12 departments across the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, and the College of Humanities and Science. The program has $6.8M in annual, direct, peer-reviewed funding ($2.5M from NCI, $3.1M from other NIH institutes; and $1.2 from other agencies). In the current project period, CPC members authored 337 cancer- focused research publications reflecting the highly collaborative nature of these scientists; 125 (37%) were intra- programmatic, 46 (14%) were inter-programmatic, 233 (69%) were inter-institutional with 161 (48%) being collaborations with other NCI-designated cancer centers. In addition, the CPC Program has tripled the number of multi-Principal Investigator (MPI) and multi-project awards during the current project period. Their portfolio now includes 16 MPI R01/R21s, two U01s, one UG1, one U54, two P20s, and a Stand Up to Cancer award. The CPC Program also has a growing portfolio of clinic- and community-based interventional studies addressing disparities, supportive care needs, and survivorship, and investigators and since 2016 have enrolled 1,663 individuals to interventional studies and over 18,000 to non-interventional studies. During the next CCSG project period, the CPC Program will continue to anchor its efforts around community-based and community-engaged research to identify and decrease cancer r...