FLORIDA – A new initiative launched in 20 states, including Florida and Georgia, aims to gain an understanding of cancer disparities and other health conditions among black women.
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The American Cancer Society said Black women are 60% more likely than white women to die of cervical cancer.
It also said breast cancer kills Black women at a 40% higher rate than white women.
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ACS said Black people have the highest death rate and shortest survival of any racial or ethnic group.
Imagine 100,000 black women from 20 states between the ages 22-55, all documenting their health and lifestyles over the next 30 years to attack cancer head-on.
“Endless possibility, that level of granularity of data, we will find the answers,” Dr Lauren McCullogh, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACS said.
McCullogh is working to make it happen with the ACS’s new initiative “Voices of Black Women”.
She described a lot of work being done to help Black women in the past, but no substantial progress.
“We’ve not been included in medical research in a way that honors our lives and our experiences,” McCullogh said. “I’ve been studying the health of Black women for the last 12 years and there is nothing like this that exists and there likely will be nothing like it in at least my lifetime…I just really hope that Black women feel seen by this.”
Cancer can affect anyone but it doesn’t affect everyone the same. With the 20 states and D.C. selected, McCullogh said they represented just over 90% of the U.S. Black population.
And with the age group 25-55, she said it’s because black women are diagnosed with cancer younger than any other race or ethnic group.
Population Science allows the collection of large groups of people and their lived experiences to track health outcomes.
That’s Dr. Alpa Patel does with ACS. She said this is a chance to understand how where you live can affect whether you live and how you live.
“We want to be able to understand how things that haven’t been as well studied, like discrimination, and bias in health care, those factors influence the quality of care that women wait may receive,” McCullogh said.
Patel said even though the study is for 30 years, they don’t have to wait to get that first wave of answers.
“As we continue to follow the population, they types of questions we can bring to the study, they grow. So this becomes a much much rich, richer resource as time passes,” Patel said.
Black women can enroll in the study by going to voices.cancer.org.
Participants will have to take an hour-long survey upon signing up and one for the next 30 years.
“The information you provide today is going to impact your daughters, your nieces, and granddaughters, but I think it also impacts you,” McCullogh said. “There are going to be some things that we learned very early, maybe not about cancer, but maybe about other health outcomes that will be relevant to you at 40 and 50, and 60 years old.”
ACS said they already have people signing up in all 20 states.