FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Sept. 26, 2002

Editor: Photo of Moon Chen available upon request

NATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN CANCER INITIATIVE LAUNCHED AT UC DAVIS

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — UC Davis School of Medicine is the new national headquarters for the largest project ever undertaken to curb cancer in Asian Americans, university leaders announced today.

The five-year, $7.6 million project, known as the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Treatment (AANCART), is funded by the National Cancer Institute as part of an effort to reduce ethnic disparities in cancer nationwide.

As the new headquarters for AANCART, the UC Davis Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine and UC Davis Cancer Center will coordinate the efforts of researchers at six other leading cancer centers, including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in New York City, Solove Cancer Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center in San Francisco and Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. Collectively, about one-third of all Asian Americans in the United States live in one of the cities that host these centers.

While Asian Americans have a relatively low risk of cancer overall, their cancer death rate is climbing faster than that of any other racial group. In addition, they suffer disproportionately from several forms of the disease. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are three times more likely than whites to die of liver cancer, for example, and twice as likely to die of stomach cancer. In some Asian groups, cervical cancer in women is up to five times as common as in whites.

"AANCART brings together a dream team of cancer researchers, clinicians and community leaders to address these disparities," said Moon S. Chen, Jr., associate director for cancer prevention and control at UC Davis Cancer Center and the principal investigator for AANCART nationally. One of the nation's foremost investigators into the cancer burden of ethnic minority groups, Chen was recently tapped by President Bush to serve a six-year term on the influential National Cancer Advisory Board. Chen is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine.

AANCART's goals are to develop cancer awareness and prevention programs targeted to specific segments of the Asian American population, a group that encompasses more than 30 distinct ethnic groups and 800 different languages and dialects. In addition, the project seeks to increase the number of Asian Americans participating in clinical and prevention trials, train more Asian American health workers in community cancer prevention, and conduct research focused on reducing the burden of cancer among Asian Americans.

"AANCART addresses a population of Americans that has long been overlooked in cancer prevention efforts," said Marc B. Schenker, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and preventive Medicine. "Having this program headquartered at UC Davis is a credit both to Dr. Chen and the institution."

Sacramento is a fitting headquarters for AANCART. Identified by a recent Harvard University study as the most integrated major city in America, the state capital is 17.5 percent Asian Pacific Islander. It also has the most diverse Asian population of any California city, comprised of immigrants from more than a dozen different Asian countries, from India to Indonesia, Taiwan to Thailand.

For leaders of Sacramento's Asian American community, AANCART's arrival is cause for celebration. K.W. Lee, 74, a Korean-born journalist living in Sacramento, calls the project "a godsend."

"The greater Sacramento metropolitan region, home to the traditional Asian settlements of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Filipino peoples, has undergone a major demographic shift with the rapid growth of Southeast and Southern Asian immigrant communities," said Lee, a liver and stomach cancer survivor whose parents and six siblings all died of liver cancer. "These fragmented, disparate and emerging new communities, plagued with endemic cancers, cry out for a coordinated, ethnic-specific, grassroots intervention program like AANCART."

Jerry Chong, chief legal counsel for the Sacramento-based organization CAPITAL (Council of Asian Pacific Islanders for Advocacy and Leadership), says AANCART will help unite the regionŐs diverse Asian community against a common foe, cancer.

"This is a tremendous development, accomplishment and achievement for UC Davis Cancer Center, Dr. Moon Chen, AANCART and the Asian Pacific Islander community in our fight against cancer," Chong said. "We pledge our cooperation, help and resources to the battle against this terrible disease which has claimed the lives of so many loved ones and friends."

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Claudia Morain, Medical News Office, (916) 734-9023

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