Grant Number:	5U01CA202979-10 Interpret this number
Primary Investigator:	Zheng, Wei
Organization:	Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Project Title:	Southern Community Cohort Study
Fiscal Year:	2025

This application proposes continuation of the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS), a large, prospective cohort study tracking the cancer and other disease experience of a cohort of nearly 86,000 adults age 40-79 at cohort entry. By design, most of the cohort members were recruited from communities in the US Southeast that experience high cancer risk or high cancer mortality rates. Recruitment took place during 2002-2009 across 12 southern states mainly at Community Health Centers (CHCs), institutions providing basic health and preventative services. Our recruitment strategy resulted in the SCCS comprising a segment of the American population at elevated cancer risk seldom if ever enrolled in large numbers in other cohorts including Southern, low-income, rural, and African American participants. Associating with CHCs also facilitated creation of the unique SCCS Biospecimen Repository, with bloods obtained and stored for approximately 40,000, mouth cells for 39,000, urines for 24,000 and DNA available for nearly 90%. No other cohort has a collection of baseline blood, buccal cell, and urine specimens from African Americans as comprehensive as the SCCS. Herein, we seek funding to continue the operational aspects of this highly successful study. The SCCS is poised to produce even greater benefit in the coming years as the cohort matures, and larger numbers of cancer events occur. We propose to continue both passive (via linkage with national mortality, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, state cancer registries and other health record databases) and active (via questionnaire survey) follow up of the cohort. The Repository has been exceptionally important to date in genetic and molecular studies, since the SCCS provides one of the few resources available for discovery-stage analyses and for independent replication of findings in a US South population. Continuation of the SCCS will enable full utilization of the investment made thus far in this unique national resource and enhance its richness. The follow up of the cohort will accrue additional cancer and other disease outcomes enabling critical hypothesis-driven research (to be funded separately) into the causes of cancer in the US Southeast and nationally, especially in communities with high cancer risk.