Indiana Department of Health awards CDC grant to IUCCC

The Indiana Department of Health has awarded more than $118,000 to the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement (OCOE) to serve as the fiscal agent for the Indiana Cancer Consortium (ICC). 

The award, totaling $118,650, is part of a grant (NU58DP007166) to the health department’s Comprehensive Cancer Control Program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is for the 2023-24 federal fiscal year (June 30, 2023, to June 29, 2024), with the potential for annual renewal up to three years. 

The Indiana Department of Health sought proposals from organizations with a longstanding history of collaboration and engagement with local organizations and a history of maintaining sustainable community engagement and implementing evidence-based approaches to public health and cancer control. 

As the fiscal agent, the OCOE will create and implement a sustainability plan for ICC, manage and improve membership participation and provide the ICC with financial management and human resources support. The ICC will be housed in the OCOE; Demarcus Sneed will continue to be director of the ICC. 

The OCOE and the consortium will continue their work together to implement statewide cancer-related education, prevention and control activities. Those activities focus on lung, breast, colon, pancreatic, and HPV-related cancers. The collaborative work focuses on reducing the number of new cancer cases and the number of deaths caused by those cancers, especially among underrepresented populations. 

In previous years, Cancer Support Community Indiana and Little Red Door Cancer Agency have served as the fiscal agent of the ICC.