Projects

Team Science Project - James and Esther King Biomedical Research Program
Funded by the James and Esther King Florida Biomedical Research Program, June 2006 - May 2008.

Florida’s Biomedical Research Program is funded from Florida's 1997 settlement against the tobacco companies to support biomedical research and technology development at Florida's research institutions, and to improve prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure of tobacco-related diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and pulmonary disease.

The goal of the University of Miami's Team Science Program grant is to analyze and disseminate data on tobacco-related cancers and tobacco use in Florida that can be used to develop and evaluate interventions in three areas: (1) reduce tobacco use (primary prevention), (2) increase early detection of cancer (secondary prevention), and (3) ensure access to state-of-the-art treatment (tertiary prevention).
Data Sources:

Florida Cancer Data System (FCDS)

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)

Florida Adult Tobacco Survey (FLATS),

Florida Youth Tobacco Survey (FYTS)

Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA),

Florida Vital Statistics.

There are three projects, each supported by a Biostatistics Core and Data Management Core and an Outreach, Education and Dissemination Core.

Project 1: County-Level Tobacco Use Data
PI: Youjie Huang, MD DrPH
Co-PI: Kristopher Arheart, Ed.D.

Collect information on behaviors related to tobacco use among middle and high school students in Florida, combining BRFSS and FLATS.

Analyzing the data to estimate the prevalence of youth and adult tobacco use-related behaviors by gender, race and ethnicity, using BRFSS, FYTS and FLATS at the county level and possibly below the unit of County.

Use analyses to design primary prevention interventions and future research projects.

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Project 2: Geographic Areas of High Cancer Burden
PI: Lora Fleming, MD PhD
Co-PI: Jill MacKinnon, PhD

Use cancer cluster software (SaTScan) and data from Project 1 to identify geographic areas with higher than expected incidence and mortality rates from tobacco-related cancer, and to examine socio-economic factors related to excess tobacco-associated cancer incidence and mortalilty rates.

Disseminate findings to the general public and to health care professionals to develop and seek funding for community-based interventions.

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Project 3: Outcome Predictors for Tobacco-Related Cancers
PI: Dido Franceschi, MD
Co-PI Leonidas Koniaris, MD

Use SaTScan with FCDS data to identify geographic areas with higher than expected incidence of late stage tobacco associated cancer.

Use FCDS and AHCA data to identify patient- and treatment-level factors associated with survival for tobacco-associated cancers.

Create a framework to provide educational opportunities for primary and secondary health care providers to increase awareness of issues related to late stage diagnosis, and options to improve early detection and cancer treatment outcomes.

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