An article was listed in more than one column in Table 6-1 if its title included more than one appropriate term, for example, "Hispanic" and "American Indian." As indicated in Table 6-1, starting in 1995, there were large increases in both the number of publications and the number of titles with some relation to dissemination compared with the numbers in previous years. The reasons for these increases are not clear, but several possibilities are apparent: since the mid-1980s NCI has funded an increasing number of research projects related to ethnic minority and medically underserved populations, resulting in an increase in the number of related publications; researchers may have published at a greater frequency multiple articles that were based on the same numbers of projects performed in previous years; and community and political activism may have increased the pressure for both. Other, less obvious reasons may also be worth investigating.
As noted in Chapter 4, the committee sought to better understand the needs of ethnic minority and medically underserved cancer survivors and the perceptions of NIH programs and research activities among individuals in these communities by holding a public meeting at which testimony was received from representatives of several community-based cancer prevention and health promotion organizations. These individuals are identified and their comments are summarized in Chapter 4. However, some of the testimony presented at that meeting relates directly to the experience of cancer survivors (two of the panelists were breast cancer survivors, and another experienced the loss of a close family member due to cancer). These comments, along with the panelists' recommendations, are summarized below.