The Role of Community Voices in Advancing Cancer Research and Policy: Kimlin Tam Ashing, PhD

In part 2 of an interview with The American Journal of Managed Care^® at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2025, Kimlin Tam Ashing, PhD, professor and founding director of the Center of Community Alliance for Research & Education at City of Hope National Medical Center, shares strategies to boost community engagement and discusses its potential impact on future cancer research and policy.

Watch part 1 to learn more about the role of community engagement in translating research findings into cancer-related policy.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What strategies can research teams use to collaborate with communities and stakeholders to ensure that diverse perspectives help shape cancer policy?

We are so ready to do this, and I think there are many ways. It's reaching the communities where they are, so going outside the walls of our cancer centers and going to community health fairs, going to faith-based organizations, going through advocacy organizations. I find that once you develop that trusting relationship, the communities are so open to share their wisdom, their knowledge, and their resources.

Communities have health resources. They have ways that they've already used to address the community's needs. We can build capacity with the community. The community shares that knowledge, so it's a bidirectional relationship. In my personal experience, communities have really helped me advance my science. They have connected me with other community partners that I may not have known about. They have expanded my network, so truly bidirectional.

We can offer our data, our data science, our libraries, and help them write grants for the work that they do. I think we have to be open to the integration of cancer, societal determinants, and communities' needs beyond the cancer so that it's really a true, genuine caring for that community.

Using other scientists that have been successful, that's one of the resources I bring to City of Hope. I have these multisectoral, multiethnic partners. These are relationships that I've built over the 20 years I've been at City of Hope. Leveraging those partners, always in a bidirectional relationship, always about capacity building, and being genuine and caring about the communities we serve.

Looking ahead, what do you envision for the future of community engagement in cancer research and policy? Are there any emerging trends or tools that could further enhance community involvement in shaping cancer-related policy?

I think communities are the hot topic. It's where we need to go, and we need to go fast. The communities I've worked with already in terms of strategies, it's now increasing community capacity, not only to understand science, but to understand policy and how that science can not only influence care, but could influence funding and policies related to cancer care and cancer outcomes.

I think the next step, I think we've been doing a decent job of training community advocates in science and understanding science and understanding protocols. Now, we need to advance that work in terms of the policy arena.

One of the ways that we have done that at City of Hope is by recognizing the data on the disparities related to cancer outcomes in California and leveraging our community partners to present this data that those who are covered by Medi-Cal do poorly in terms of outcomes. Medi-Cal does a great job in terms of primary care, but in terms of specialty care, it's not where the patients are being served adequately.

Recognizing that data and gap, we work with our community partners to scan the attitudes and beliefs about who should be accessing the best care. Of course, our community partners and their stakeholders were very, very supportive of changing the laws and the availability for those who are on Medi-Cal to access care. Over a few years, and [with] the engagement of diverse community partners, including large-scale advocacy organizations, as well as grassroots community partners, we've been able, in 2021, to have the Cancer Care Equity Act law passed in California.

This law now allows for those who are covered by Medi-Cal with a complex cancer (we're hoping for all cancers, but it became complex cancers) to access care, which means that they have access to specialized cancer care, to precision medicine, immunotherapy, genetics/genomics testing, clinical studies, clinical trials, all of the best care that we offer. We do see that all of these are part of the continuum of care, including clinical studies. Now, these patients have access to that.