Jenny Besse

Mallory Brown

Gia Hellwig

Navi Kaur

Vicky Law

Prem Tripathi

June 6, 2007

Executive Summary

This year, the Z Team has worked in conjunction with the American Cancer Society and the Diversity Coalition to organize the first annual Sacramento Dialogue on Cancer (SDOC). The SDOC, aimed at raising awareness of cancer-related health disparities among medically underserved populations, will lay the foundation for future leaders to make progress in reducing these disparities. Our team is a member of the Diversity Coalition, the group that is developing the SDOC with the goal of mobilizing the greater Sacramento community for cancer control. More specifically, the goal of the coalition is to implement healthier lifestyles, facilitate cancer screenings, and administer appropriate vaccinations against infectious diseases known to be carcinogenic. The SDOC will focus on educating ethnic and racial minorities within the Sacramento region who face greater cancer health disparities.

As a group, we recruited multiple student leaders from health-based organizations at the University of California, Davis and California State University, Sacramento to form a collegiate diversity coalition. Our list of organizations range from the 5 student run clinics based in Sacramento including Bayanihan Clinic, Paul Hom Clinic, and Clinica Tepati, Pre-health fraternities and sororities including Kappa Gamma Delta and Delta Epsilon Mu, CSUS Pre-Dental Association, study abroad programs, and service organizations such as Colleges Against Cancer. These groups will serve to bring together present and future plans for helping underserved populations affected by preventable cancers. We instituted a poster contest at the SDOC between the organizations to challenge the groups to find the most creative way to showcase their health-related activities and goals within their community. These posters will be made by the student organizations we recruited and will showcase their cancer-related outreach services.

We have taken the initiative to create a publication, highlighting the steps youth are taking to help the underserved populations. This publication highlights student organization efforts from both college campuses to decrease the incidence of preventable cancers within the Sacramento community. We hope the publication will inspire other youth organizations to facilitate new cancer-related health initiatives against preventative cancers and inform community leaders of what the youth has accomplished and hopes to achieve in the future.

The SDOC’s future potential depends on the success of its first year. If received well by the community and the community based organizations of the greater Sacramento area, then there is a possibility that the SDOC could be repeated for at least two more years with the proper funding. This funding could come from the Center for Disease Control. It too would depend on the community’s desire to continue to inform those who can assist the communities of underserved populations facing these health disparities. The Diversity Coalition needs to keep this forum a high priority and continue to draw on the youth’s innovative ideas and desires to inform other youth that they can make a difference just like we are.