What's New at the Decatur Community Partnership

The first quarter of 2007 has been one of renewed invigoration for the Partnership. After returning home from ENACCT’s national meeting in Tacoma, Washington, the Decatur Community Partnership (DCP) had their first ENACCT reunion. Members of the strategy team and all lead trainers came together to reflect, react, and re-focus. They immediately began to plan workshops for community leaders, using an expanded definition provided by ENACCT.

Their lead trainers have been able to conduct a number of workshops and presentations, educating a total of 38 community leaders and 125 members of the public.

We are learning more about reaching different parts of our community; one example is training high school students as information leaders for their families and communities. Decatur High School is now requiring that one health class a year be devoted to cancer clinical trials.

One of our lead trainers, Bob Kerans, presented clinical trials information to 110 high school students in February. He shared his personal experience about his mother’s and daughter’s cancers, and challenged this new generation to be the ones who find the cure. Not too surprisingly, we discovered that the majority of students did not know that there were over 80 clinical trials available in Decatur. In an impactful culmination to the presentation, the students’ teacher shared with all the story of her own battle with cancer and how it ultimately led to her joining not one, but 2 clinical trials!

With regards to the future, in 2007, DCP will be working on a marketing campaign that will deliver key messages to the community via billboards and bus signs. Additionally, and most importantly, we have become stronger as a team, have overcome challenges, and have achieved many short term goals while at the same time making progress towards the long term grant objectives.