2025-2026 Toolkit Fellowship
About the Program
In an effort to raise firefighters’ awareness of their risk for cancer, and to share strategies to reduce that risk, Sylvester’s Firefighter Cancer Initiative has developed the FCI Physical Toolkit, a collection of educational and support resources for firefighters. Each kit contains educational posters, shower hangers, recipe cards, toolkit app information, health screening passports, cancer navigation information, and sunscreen. Kits are designed to be distributed to fire stations following a brief peer-delivered educational presentation on cancer prevention. As part of this project, FCI is conducting a study to evaluate whether this approach is feasible and acceptable to firefighters. FCI research staff and firefighters selected for the Fellowship will work together to recruit participants, deliver the Toolkit intervention, and collect data.
The Toolkit Study Fellows will:
- Complete training on cancer in the fire service, risk reduction strategies, and research ethics/compliance
- Recruit firefighters to participate in the study
- Obtain informed consent from firefighter participants
- Lead peer-to-peer cancer prevention education sessions
- Collect data to evaluate the toolkit and training materials
Meet the Fellows
2024-2025 TORCHES: The Training in Occupational Research on Cancer via Heterogenous Epidemiology Skills (TORCHES) Fellowship
The TORCHES Firefighter Research Fellowship Program aims to train and educate working fire service personnel with foundational research knowledge and skills aimed at cancer control and prevention in the fire service.
About the Program
TORCHES was established to facilitate research endeavors that can lead to a better understanding of the risks, prevention strategies, and control measures related to cancer in firefighters. The 12-month fellowship includes an educational component and practical research experience for firefighter fellows to gain a well-rounded experience in literature review, study design, study execution, basic data analysis, manuscript preparation, and research dissemination. Under the guidance of the Firefighter Cancer Initiative faculty and researchers, firefighter fellows will develop and implement a research project at their home fire department. Each fellow will present their research at the 2025 International Firefighter Cancer Symposium.
Educational Objectives
- Identify different sources of ideas for research topics in fire service cancer prevention and control
- Relate the basic organizational structure of a literature review
- Construct and develop a hypothesis and research question
- Demonstrate how to construct an experiment or study design
- Describe a basic understanding of common wet and dry laboratory skills and techniques
- Discuss the Institutional Review Board (IRB) applications process for clinical and population-level research
- Review and practice the concept behind and usage of relational databases
- Apply the basics of research statistics
- Prepare for the dissemination of evidence-based research findings
Meet Our 2024-2025 Fellows
