Welcome  to  public  health  moment from  the  University  of  Minnesota. In  an  effort  to  reduce  cancer  related  health  disparities, the  National  Cancer  Institute  is providing  a  2.2  million  dollar training  grant  to  the  University  of  Minnesota's Medical  School  and  School  of  Public  Health. The  grant  will  be  used  to  help  researchers  develop,  test, and  evaluate  intervention  strategies related  to  reducing  these  disparities. Gene  Forster,  a  professor  of  epidemiology  at  Minnesota, explains  what  we  already  know  about  these  disparities. Racial  ethnic  minority  groups are  often  more  likely  to  get cancer  and  to  die  from  cancer  of various  kinds  than  the  general  population. For  example,  African  American  men  have 32%  higher  rate  of  cancer  than  white  men, and  African  American  women  have a  16%  higher  rate  of  cancer  compared  to  white  women. Forster  said  she  and  her  colleagues  will target  new  researchers  for  the  training. This  is  really  about training  the  next  generation  of  researchers  to  focus specifically  on  that  issue  of what  can  we  do  to  reduce  that  disparity. Another  goal  is  to  train individuals  from vulnerable  populations  to  do  this  research. They're  much  more  effective in  working  with  their  own  communities. We  really  want  to make  the  research  workforce  more  diverse.