The human race has been making remarkable strides in the sphere of health and health care for decades. Organizations, like the American Cancer Society, have spent hundreds of thousands of hours researching, studying and contributing to the communities we live in.
Population-based cohort studies are one part of these contributions. These studies follow groups of people over a long period of time and examine their characteristics, environments and outcomes. Such studies have led to impactful long-term changes, like a decrease in adult male smokers in the United States from 50% to today’s 15%, the enactment of smoke-free policies and the development of innovative therapies and programs for addictions.
Yet, despite the advancements made, there are still significant gaps in health care equality and major disparities in health outcomes for Black communities—in particular, for Black women.
“We know that for Black women, if they are diagnosed with breast cancer, as an example, they are actually 40% more likely to die of that breast cancer diagnosis than a white woman, and we don’t fully understand why,” Dr. Alpa Patel, senior vice president of population science at the American Cancer Society, says.
Patel, along with the American Cancer Society, is determined to change that. The organization has been doing large population studies for more than 70 years, and now, she’s co-leading one of their most pivotal ones yet: VOICES of Black Women.
VOICES of Black Women is a groundbreaking study “calling on Black women from all walks of life” to participate in figuring out why Black women have worse outcomes in cancer diagnoses and improving the health of Black women overall.
“There’s a lot we need to understand about how disease develops in Black women, what’s leading to differences in the types of diseases that are presenting in Black women, and then how to intervene, so we can actually change what those outcomes are,” Patel says. “That was really the motivation for us.”
The study is calling on Black women between the ages of 25 and 55 who have never been diagnosed with cancer (with the exception of basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma) and live in one of the 20 selected states that contain 90% of Black women living in the U.S.
One of these states is Pennsylvania, home to around 1.4 million Black residents (male and female) who make up almost 13% of the state’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Susquehanna Valley is home to a flourishing population of Black women, and Dauphin County has the third highest percentage of Black residents overall in Pennsylvania, at 20.7%.
“We want to be able to capture women from all different geographies. … We’re looking for women who are motivated to help us understand how to improve the health of their community, the health of other Black women, today, and in the future, because the information we glean from this study will give us actionable ways to change what health looks like,” Patel says.
She adds that the goal is to enroll 100,000 Black women in the study and observe their lives and journeys over the next several years.
“We want our study participants to share about how they live, work and play, about their family medical history and other information through completing surveys,” she says. “We’re not asking you to take any sort of interventional medication. We’re not asking you to take a pill or go to clinic visits or do anything different than what you already do. What we want to understand is what your lived experiences are.”
Patel says VOICES of Black Women is important for communities like the Susquehanna Valley because of the population of Black women that resides in all six counties, and inequalities in health negatively influence everyone whether you identify as Black or not.
“I continue to see shock when I rattle off some of these statistics about the disparities that exist as it relates to cancer, but these health inequalities aren’t just limited to cancer. We know that they exist for maternal mortality … diabetes and cardiovascular disease and a lot of other health outcomes,” Patel says. “This is just a part of the health equality work we do at the American Cancer Society.”
Patel encourages any Black woman who meets the criteria to sign up and enroll in the study. She says participants will first fill out a consent form explaining what the study is, as well as a lifestyle and medical survey that takes around an hour. After the initial enrollment, all participants need to do is fill out one 30-minute-long survey every six months.
And if you have any Black friends or loved ones, she says, make sure to spread the word and do your part in helping to eliminate cancer and health disparities from all communities.
“This is an opportunity to honor someone in your own life who has been affected by cancer. That may be a family member, and that may be a friend or a coworker. There are not many of us who have not seen someone in our circle who has been affected by cancer. This is really an easy way to honor those individuals,” Patel says.
To participate in the study or learn more about it, visit voices.cancer.org. To learn more about cancer, resources, and how to join the fight to eliminate cancer from your community, go to cancer.org.
