Student Spotlight: Sabrina Mellinghoff, M3

Sabrina Mellinghoff, M3 and 2025 MSSRP Scholar presented her poster titled “Neighborhood Concetrated Disadvantage and Risk Recurence in a Nationwide Student of US Black Women” at American Association of Cancer Research in San Diego in April.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Mollie Barnard and Dr. Julie Palmer, her research investigates breast cancer recurrence in the Black Women’s Health Study and so far has studied the association between neighborhood disadvantage and risk of recurrence. The first stage of this work involved conducting a comprehensive review to identify which of the 3,000+ study participants who developed primary breast cancer experienced a subsequent recurrence. Now, Sabrina and her team are able to pose questions and apply exposures such as an index of neighborhood disadvantage to the cohort and study their associations with risk of recurrence.

Coming into medical school, Sabrina had a research interest in epidemiology and a desire to improve my statistical abilities. She also had a clinical interest in cancer and women’s health, and soon became aware of the Black Women’s Health Study, as it is truly a landmark study housed here at BU. Not only is it the largest to study the health of US Black women, but many influential findings about breast cancer in Black women came from it. Sabrina is grateful adn feels honored to work within the BWHS, and to learn how much work is occuring behind the scenes to run such a study. Being that Black women diagnosed with breast cancer consistently have worse disease outcomes, especially those living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, this research is relevant and timely. With an increasingly high survival rate of initial disease, disease recurrence is becoming an ever more influential driver of breast cancer outcomes and must be studied.

Through her research experience, Sabrina has learned that epidemiology grants the ability to weave thousands of individual stories into findings with statistical power, value, and the potential to expose truth. It has been meaningful for her to then be able to discuss such work with others in the field, for example at AACR, where people were excited about ideas in my poster and shared very constructive feedback.

This year, Sabrina presented at Medical Student Research Symposium this February. She also presented a poster at AACR and is currently working on a manuscript now.