The American Cancer Society has launched a large-scale, ambitious study focused on a population long neglected, despite high rates of cancer and cancer-related deaths: Black women.
The initiative, called VOICES of Black Women, is believed to be the first long-term population study of this scale to focus specifically on the factors driving cancer prevalence and death among Black women.
The researchers plan to register 100,000 black women cancer-free, ages 25 to 55, in Washington, DC and 20 states where most Black American women reside. Subjects will be interviewed twice a year about their behaviors, environmental exposures and life experiences, and followed for 30 years; any cancer they may develop will be monitored.
Similar studies conducted by the American Cancer Society in the past have yielded crucial lessons about the causes of cancer, such as identifying smoking as a cause of lung cancer and linking the consumption of red meat and processed meat and an increased risk of colon cancer.
Although some previous studies have looked at large numbers of black women, the research has not been able to “focus on the specific drivers of cancer in this population,” said Dr. Alpa Patel, senior vice president from population sciences to society and co. -principal investigator of the VOICES study, with Dr. Lauren McCullough.
“In general population studies, you tend to ask questions that will be applicable to the majority of the population,” she said. “So, by delving into the lived experiences of discrimination, bias, systematic issues, environmental influences, and cultural aspects of health behaviors, and how the narratives around them are shaped in different populations – these types of he unique aspects of understanding what contributes to cancer in a population, it is not asked.
Women will be asked about their use of personal care products, for example, including chemical straighteners, which have been implicated in some cancers. Researchers will track stressors related to the physical environment and factors such as neighborhood walkability, crime, air pollution, access to healthy foods and proximity to grocery stores. alcohol and establishments selling cigarettes.
Black women have the highest mortality rates and lowest survival rates for many cancers, regardless of racial or ethnic group. Black men and women have higher rates of colorectal cancer than white Americans, for example.
Black women die from uterine cancer twice as often as white women, are twice as likely to be diagnosed with stomach cancer, and more than twice as likely to die from it. They are also 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer.
Persistently high mortality rates among black breast cancer patients are one of the reasons cited recently by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for lowering the age of initiation of mammography screening from 50 to 40 years.
Racial disparities in breast cancer survival are relatively new. Until the 1970s, there was no race…
