The purpose of Improving Cancer Outcomes for African Americans in Michigan (ICOAA) is to reduce the unequal burden of cancer and improve the quality of life of African Americans in Michigan.

This initiative was based on a community engagement model, where African-American community representatives from across socio-economic strata were organized to provide leadership in developing methods to best engage members of their communities to address the issues of cancer.

The concept was to form Design Teams in each of the five selected communities to plan and implement activities to engage the larger community to assist in accomplishing the goals of the project through a statewide initiative.

In May of 2002, the first steps were taken by engaging two to three representatives from each of the five communities (Detroit, Flint, Lansing, Pontiac, and Saginaw) to review an initial concept. Once there was buy-in from this group, additional representatives were added to develop the design team and the project. Together, the Design Teams further developed the overall project goals to:

• increase awareness about cancer in the African-American community;

• increase knowledge about cancer;

• increase communication about cancer; and

• decrease myths about cancer and increase screening and utilization of cancer screening programs.

Each community then began to develop a work plan, which included at least two interventions. By the beginning of 2004, Faith Access to Community Economic Development, the coordinating agency for this project, hired community liaisons to assist Detroit, Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw in continuing the development, facilitation and implementation of the interventions. The interventions developed in each community had two thrusts: One focused on addressing a specific segment of the African-American community, and the other on a community-wide intervention, addressing the broader community to promote awareness and involvement.

Currently, Design Teams have been organized in Detroit, Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw, with a total of 63 Design Team members; most members are African American and live within the community they represent. Due to extenuating circumstances, development of the Pontiac Design Team was delayed until phase 2 of the initiative.

During 2004, four focused interventions and four community-wide interventions occurred.

To learn more about the four teams and their interventions, download a description of this project. (available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file)*

*Please Note: You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open, view and print this file once it has been downloaded. If you need a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, please click here.

last updated: 06/21/06

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