New York AANCART: using participatory research to address the health needs of South Asian and Korean Americans in New York City.

Since its inception in April 2000, the New York Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research, and Training (NY AANCART) has conducted cancer control education, research, and infrastructure-building activities in collaboration with the agenda of the national AANCART project, one of the Special Population Networks funded by the National Cancer Institute. In New York, the AANCART program was developed based on the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), a research approach that is centered on community strengths and issues and that engages the community in the research process. NY AANCART has been dedicated to developing leadership within and collaboration with community-based organizations (CBOs) to address the needs of medically underserved New York Asian-American populations. In particular, NY AANCART has worked with CBOs to develop and implement a diverse public health agenda that addresses the concerns of the communities that are served by these organizations. Using case studies from two community-based partnerships that were developed by NY AANCART, the current report describes how the principles of CBPR were applied in two rapidly growing Asian-American communities in New York City.