ASPO & NCI Training Session

On Wednesday, July 17, Shine Chang, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, hosted an ASPO session for PIs and leaders of cancer prevention and control training and research education programs to hear from and interact with NCI leaders from the Center for Cancer Training, including many program officers from the NCI Cancer Training Branch and from the new NCI Center for Cancer Health Equity.  Available at the ASPO website is a recording of this session and slides presented by NCI.

Dr. Oliver Bogler, head of NCI’s Center for Cancer Training provided a recap and update of NCI’s analysis of cancer prevention and control training program application success rate presented to NCAB/BSA in June 2023, which included discussion of undersolicitation of NCI F31 predoc and F32 postdoc fellowship applications/awards relevant to research topics typically funded in cancer control (DCCPS) and cancer prevention (DCP) for FY13-22.  For the same period, there did not seem to be an undersolicitation of NCI T32 training program applications/awards; T32 awards in cancer control and cancer prevention comprised 25% of all T32 expenditures, 35.1% of all predoc slots supported by NCI T32 awards, and 8.1% of postdoc slots on NCI T32 awards.

There was an informative discussion about how NCI program officers advocate and advise recipients of R00 awards from cancer prevention and population sciences who may be offered weaker start-up packages and NCI’s interest in gathering more information from institutions about hiring packages for assistant professors; anyone who would like to share thoughts with NCI about this topic is asked to contact Dr. Sergey Radaev at [email protected] .  Please join us for the next session at the 2025 annual ASPO meeting in Philadelphia on Sunday, April 6.