DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Iowa-Wide Oncology Research Coalition (I-WORC) is a multidisciplinary consortium of eighteen components and four sub-component performance sites comprised of nine hospitals including one designated children's hospital, eighteen gynecologic, medical, pediatric, radiation, and surgical oncology practices and 60 physicians. In addition to the operations office in Des Moines, the I-WORC has component sites located in four geographical regions in Iowa (Ames, Cedar Rapids, Mason City and Ottumwa) and one geographical region in Moline, IL. The majority of the I-WORC components have held memberships with several cooperative research bases for many years and have experience with clinical research through participation in the NCI Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP). I-WORC plans to affiliate with the following research bases: Alliance, ECOG-ACRIN, NRG, CCWF, and COG . The goals of I-WORC are: 1) Provide excellence in cancer care to patients and families through participation in high quality cancer research; 2) Support the goals and work of research bases with involvement of IWORC investigators, research staff, and patient populations; 3) Increase public and professional awareness of clinical trials through community outreach efforts and collaboration with other medical providers in the community; 4) Increase accrual in clinical studies by building on prior recruitment strategies implemented in previous cancer control/cancer prevention studies; 5) Develop strategies to increase clinical trial participation in minority groups and the underserved population in rural areas; 6) Collaborate with local health care institutions to increase participation in correlative and translational biospecimen studies; 7) Collaborate with local health care institutions to develop and expand participation in care care delivery studies." |