Events

2018 Sandpit Workshop: Implementing Digital Health Interventions for Cancer Prevention

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Cancer Research U.K. (CRUK) is convening an invitation-only “Sandpit” workshop (i.e., ideas lab) on October 28-31, 2018, in Potomac, MD. Workshop participants will form multidisciplinary teams to generate novel ideas for advancing cancer prevention through the effective implementation of digital health tools. They also will receive guidance on applying for seed funding from CRUK to test the feasibility of their ideas.

Contact Information

Kara L. Hall, Ph.D.
Health Behaviors Research Branch
Phone: (240) 276-6831
Email: hallka@mail.nih.gov

HINTS Data Users Conference

September 13–14, 2018
Bethesda, MD

2017 New Grantee Workshop Overview

The Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) hosted the 2017 DCCPS New Grantee Workshop on September 18-19, 2017.

The workshop brought together new extramural investigators funded by DCCPS who received their first NIH Research Project Grants (R01) in FY 2016 and FY 2017. The primary goals of the workshop were to help build a strong and vibrant cancer control research program and to help advance new investigators’ careers.

You can find more information on the 2017 New Grantee Workshop Overview page.

2017 Sandpit Workshop: Knowledge Integration Across Health Domains, Professions, and Nations to Advance Cancer Prevention

April 24-26, 2017
Potomac, Maryland

The National Cancer Institute hosted a “Sandpit” workshop (i.e., ideas lab) that brought together a broad, multidisciplinary group of participants. Participants were encouraged to collaborate on innovative ideas for integrating knowledge across health behaviors, research fields, and national contexts in order to advance cancer control and prevention. Health behaviors often co-occur and have shared determinants at multiple levels (e.g., biological, individual, relational, environmental). However, research programs frequently examine and intervene on single health behaviors without systematically integrating knowledge across behaviors. Through an intensive, interactive, and collaborative experience that brought together researchers from different disciplines and national contexts, the Sandpit workshop aimed to facilitate the development of research ideas that cut across behavioral domains, professional sectors, and geographic boundaries to cultivate new insights across five key cancer-related health behaviors: tobacco use, alcohol consumption, dietary behavior, physical activity, and UV exposure.

The intensive three-day residential workshop took place April 24-26, 2017, in Potomac, Maryland, and provided participants with an opportunity to:

• Network and form collaborations spanning different research areas, organizations, and nations.
• Work in multidisciplinary teams to generate innovative project ideas.
• Receive guidance on applying for seed funding from Cancer Research UK to test the feasibility of their ideas.

US and UK teams developed five focus areas.

1. Advancing Cancer Prevention Pricing Interventions across the UK and US: Optimizing Message Framing (Rachel Carey, David Conway, Joseph Lee, Elisa Trucco)
2. Changing How People Think and Feel about Cancer Prevention Behaviors: Translating Neuroscience into Population Health (Elisa Trucco, Laura Martin, Sara Levens, Nina Cooperman, Austin Baldwin, Noreen Mdege, Angelos Kassianos)
3. Incentivized smoking cessation for tobacco treatment-resistant diabetics (Sydney Martinez, Fiona Mitchell, Sammy Quaife)
4. Project HATCH – Staying Healthy After Childbirth: A cross-national study to support smoking abstinence and inter-related cancer-prevention behaviours among postpartum women (Caitlin Notley, Angelos Kassianos, Dian Nostikasari, Claire Spears, Allison Kurti, Jamie Payton)
5. RESET Sleep: Regulating Exercise, Substance Use, and Eating through Sleep (Jennifer Taber, Beth Smith, Tapio Paljarvi, Brinda Rana, Lisa Cadmus-Bertram, Darren Mays)

Network on Biobehavioral Pathways in Cancer Capstone

September 15-16, 2016
Rockville, Maryland

The Network on Biobehavioral Pathways in Cancer sought to accelerate the translation and communication of biobehavioral discoveries that advance clinical cancer care. Specifically, the network’s researchers explored how psychological phenomena such as stress might affect the biology of cancer and disease outcomes. The capstone meeting brought together all of the funded researchers within the network and gave them the opportunity to present their findings.

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