Julie Palmer, ScD, codirector of the BU-BMC Cancer Center, has been awarded a one-year, $589,000 grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) for her research project, “Breast Cancer Drivers in Black Women: Society to Cells.”

The project’s goal is to reduce breast cancer disparities and improve outcomes among Black women by advancing personalized, evidence-based care. Ultimately, over a five-year period, a comprehensive study of the interaction of comorbidities, social determinants of health (SDOH), and breast cancer genetics in Black women will be conducted.

“This grant will support the initial involvement of the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS) in the BCRF-Estée Lauder Companies Disparities Project and set the stage for future work,” explains Palmer, a founding leader of the BWHS, a prospective cohort study of 59,000 Black women who enrolled in 1995 and have been filling out biennial questionnaires since that time.

A cancer epidemiologist with research projects spanning early detection, etiology, and survivorship, Palmer’s primary
focus is on elucidating reasons for the disproportionately high incidence of hormone receptor negative breast cancer in Black women and on understanding and reducing racial disparities in breast
cancer mortality.

While the BWHS has a wealth of data on SDOH, comorbidities, and lifestyle factors among Black women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, as well as data on more than 45,000 Black women without cancer, funding from this grant will add missing data elements to create uniformity across the BWHS and similar large studies. “A comprehensive and contemporary
profile of SDOH and a strategic plan for collecting and standardizing data/
SDOH elements will be formulated,” says Palmer, the Karin Grunebaum
Professor in Cancer Research and director of BU’s Slone Epidemiology Center.

Among the proposed improvements and additions:

• ●  Link with national databases that pro- vide neighborhood-level information on environmental exposures, poverty, and racial discrimination, and with health sys- tem-level data on provider characteristics and facilities.
• ●  Supplemental questionnaires will be sent to BWHS participants who are breast cancer survivors to obtain addi- tional data on treatments, insurance status, comorbidities, psychosocial stressors, and outcomes.
• ●  A novel method of obtaining dried blood spots as a source of identifying circulating RNA for BWHS breast cancer survivors will be used and, as funds permit, will also be used for women who are cancer-free but at a higher baseline risk due to a fam- ily history of breast cancer.