Welcome to the Collaborative Community Optimizing Survivorship (CoCOS) lab!

The CoCOS lab leverages community-engaged research to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities among childhood cancer survivors and their families. Central to our work is our community–academic partnership with Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services, a nonprofit community-based organization supporting families of children with cancer in a 4-county, predominantly rural, low-income, and majority Hispanic/Latino region encompassing the Salinas Valley of California (including Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, and south Santa Clara counties). Our research is inspired by design thinking (a method of creative problem solving) and guided by community-based participatory research principles with bidirectional trust and collaboration at every level.