The African American breast cancer outreach project: partnering with communities

This article describes the African American Breast Cancer Screening Outreach project, a community-based participatory intervention that was designed to increase the numbers of African American women screened for breast cancer in Texas, especially those who are poor and underserved. The project was very successful, and between 1998 and 2003, more than 114,000 people received cancer information and education and 8,459 African American women who had contact with the project were screened. Several lessons were learned from these experiences that are pertinent to engaging communities to partner with researchers in conducting community-based participatory research and illustrate the application of guiding principles outlined by Israel and colleagues in 1998.