Iowa-Wide Oncology Research Coalition (I-WORC)

The Iowa-Wide Oncology Research Coalition (I-WORC) is a multidisciplinary consortium of nineteen components and six sub-component performance sites comprised of twelve hospitals, including one designated children’s hospital, nine gynecologic, medical, pediatric, radiation, and surgical oncology practices and sixty-five physician investigators. In addition to the operations office in Des Moines, the I-WORC has component sites located in four geographical regions in Iowa (Ames, Cedar Rapids, Mason City and Ottumwa/Fairfield) and one geographical region in Moline, Illinois. I-WORC is an original NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Community Site and has affiliations with the following research bases: Alliance, ECOG-ACRIN, NRG, Wake Forest, and COG. I-WORC also actively participates in other non-member research base studies through the Cancer Trials Support Unit (CTSU) and has experience using the Central Investigational Review Board (CIRB) for human subjects review. The goals of I-WORC are: 1) Provide excellence in cancer care to patients and families through participation in high quality cancer research studies including control, prevention, treatment and care delivery; 2) Support the goals and work of research bases with involvement of I-WORC investigators and research staff to provide insight into clinical significance and feasibility during concept and protocol development, as well as identification of unique patient populations; 3) Increase public and professional awareness of clinical trials through community outreach efforts and collaboration with other medical providers in the community; 4) Increase accrual in clinical studies by building on prior recruitment strategies implemented in previous cancer control/cancer prevention, precision medicine, and treatment studies; 5) Develop strategies to increase clinical trial participation in racial/ethnic minorities, adolescent and young adult (AYA) and elderly, sexual and gender minorities, and the underserved population in rural areas; 6) Collaborate with local health care institutions to increase participation in correlative and translational bio-specimen collection studies; 7) Collaborate with local health care institutions to continue to develop and expand participation in cancer care delivery studies; 8) Capture and document screening efforts for clinical trial enrollment and address cancer health disparities by building on prior screening log strategies.