COMMUNITY OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT: ABSTRACT Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) efforts are central to The University of Kansas Cancer Center (KUCC) achieving its mission to reduce the cancer burden in our catchment area (CA). COE is led by Ronald Chen, MD, MPH, Associate Director for Health Equity, and guided by the CA Steering Committee which includes KUCC leaders and community stakeholders. Hope Krebill, MSW, BSN, RN, serves as Assistant Director for Outreach and Executive Director of the Masonic Cancer Alliance (MCA), which implements COE activities throughout the CA. The KUCC CA consists of the state of Kansas and 18 counties in western Missouri, a total of 123 counties and 4.5M population; 78% of counties and 25% of population are rural. Aim 1: Identify, monitor, and evaluate the cancer burden and needs, and KUCC impact, in the CA. KUCC has developed a database called OPTIK (Organize and Prioritize Trends to Inform KUCC), which is used to monitor cancer incidence, mortality, screening, and risk behaviors in the CA. These data are reviewed by the KUCC Community Advisory Board and the CA Steering Committee. KUCC selected priorities with the CA Steering Committee and Community Advisory Board input, which are: obesity, tobacco-related cancers, prostate cancer, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancers, and hematological cancers. There is an additional focus on rural patients given the make-up of our CA. Aim 2: Engage stakeholders to stimulate cancer research and control activities. COE works with an extensive infrastructure creating bi-directional communication between KUCC and diverse stakeholders including patients, clinical providers, and hospitals throughout the CA, which helps KUCC set priorities for cancer research and control activities, and also collaborate in these activities to affect individuals throughout the catchment area. Aim 3: Catalyze research that addresses high-priority cancers and issues specifically relevant to the CA and as guided by community stakeholders to improve health equity. COE plays a critical role in stimulating and supporting KUCC research in four important ways: 1) By facilitating bi-directional communication with community members to define KUCC priority areas and communicating these priorities to KUCC program leaders and members in order to focus research activities toward these priorities; 2) by fostering collaborations between KUCC researchers and community collaborators, and training researchers on community-engaged research; 3) by driving continued efforts for KUCC to focus on the unique needs of rural cancer patients in the CA; and 4) by creating and operationally supporting an infrastructure throughout the CA that can be leveraged for research. Aim 4: Drive, disseminate and implement cancer control activities and policies to reduce cancer burden in the CA in collaboration with community stakeholders. These activities include cancer screenings, implementation of evidence-based interventions, public ed...