Addressing health disparities has been a national challenge for decades. The National Institutes of Health-sponsored Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities are the first federal initiative to support transdisciplinary multilevel research on the determinants of health disparities. Their novel research approach combines population, clinical, and basic science to elucidate the complex determinants of health disparities. The centers are partnering with community-based, public, and quasi-public organizations to disseminate scientific findings and guide clinical practice in communities. In turn, communities and public health agents are shaping the research. The relationships forged through these complex collaborations increase the likelihood that the centers' scientific findings will be relevant to communities and contribute to reductions in health disparities.

Mounting evidence suggests physical and mental health problems relate to the built environment, including human-modified places such as homes, schools, workplaces, parks, industrial areas, farms, roads and highways. The public health relevance of the built environment requires examination. Preliminary research demonstrates the health benefits of sustainable communities. However, the impact of mediating and moderating factors within the built environment on health must be explored further. Given the complexity of the built environment, understanding its influence on human health requires a community-based, multilevel, interdisciplinary research approach. The authors offer recommendations, based upon a recent conference sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), for research and policy approaches, and suggest interagency research alliances for greater public health impact.

Estimates of those living in rural counties vary from 46.2–59 million, or 14–19% of the U.S. population. Rural communities face disadvantages compared to urban areas, including higher poverty, lower educational attainment, and lack of access to health services. We aimed to demonstrate rural-urban disparities in cancer and to examine NCI-funded cancer control grants focused on rural populations. Estimates of five-year cancer incidence and mortality from 2009–2013 were generated for counties at each level of the rural-urban continuum and for metropolitan versus non-metropolitan counties, for all cancers combined and several individual cancer types. We also examined the number and foci of rural cancer control grants funded by NCI from 2011–2016. Cancer incidence was 447 cases per 100,000 in metropolitan counties and 460 per 100,000 in non-metropolitan counties (p<0.001). Cancer mortality rates were 166 per 100,000 in metropolitan counties and 182 per 100,000 in non-metropolitan counties (p<0.001). Higher incidence and mortality in rural areas were observed for cervical, colorectal, kidney, lung, melanoma, and oropharyngeal cancers. There were 48 R- and 3 P-mechanism rural-focused grants funded from 2011–2016 (3% of 1655). Further investment is needed to disentangle the effects of individual-level SES and area-level factors to understand observed effects of rurality on cancer.