In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a cancer research education program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center designed for Native American middle school, high school and undergraduate students adapted activities to be delivered online. There are considerable challenges to adapting in-person science programming to online delivery that can impact overall effectiveness. These challenges are further exacerbated when the cognate student population also faces significant disparities in health, wealth, and educational outcomes. We encountered both disadvantages and advantages in transitioning programming to online virtual formats. Challenges faced in delivering our programming during the pandemic included varied online accessibility, peripheral stressors, and disconnection to places and people. Despite these challenges, we found several benefits in remote delivery, some of which have alleviated barriers to program participation for Native American students. Some successes achieved by transitioning to fully remote programming included increased program reach, sustainability, and cultural relevancy. In this overview of the implementation of four online programs at the middle school, high school, and undergraduate levels, we highlight the challenges and successes experienced. Through this program description, we aim to provide insight into potential strategies to improve program delivery designed for Native American students during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and beyond.

Background: Indigenous peoples experience an inequitable burden of cancer compared with other populations. The arts can serve as a culturally relevant cancer intervention and research method.Methods: A scoping review was conducted to determine how arts-based research methods have been used to address cancer in Indigenous peoples. Literature searches identified 129 publications; 32 were selected for review. The following data were extracted: communities employing arts-based cancer research, cancer control continuum stages, cancer types, art forms, and methodologies.Results: Most studies were conducted in the United States. Art as research and sound art forms were the most utilized arts-based methods. Cancer types and control continuum stages were not often specified.Conclusions: Culturally responsive, arts-based methods can enhance research and education across the cancer-control continuum with Indigenous populations. Art as Data SourcesThe arts can serve as the core of an intervention (eg, art therapy, narrative medicine) and as a method of research (ie, arts-based research). There is a growing movement to diversify the academic research environment by treating the arts as an empirical source of information and to expand our understanding of what art is to include what art does. 1 Arts-based research (ABR), a method of inquiry that recognizes artistic expressions as ways of knowing, uses artistic expression and the artistic process as a primary mode of inquiry to understand and examine the experience of both researchers and research participants. 1 In particular, ABR has been used to explore, illustrate, define, treat, and explain cancer across the control continuum. 2,3,4,5