Social and Environmental Determinants of Breast Cancer Survivorship: The Black Breast Cancer Survivors Intervention

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PROJECT SUMMARY I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Chapman University, and adjunct Assistant Professor at City of Hope (COH) Comprehensive Cancer Center. I have expertise in health disparities, community engagement, and community-based participatory research including advocacy; cancer and cancer health disparities; cancer survivorship and clinic-based interventions. However, I have not developed, implemented, or analyzed a multi-level community-based intervention for Black breast cancer survivors. Black women face disparities in all stages of the cancer continuum and their survivorship needs remain unmet. Current research on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in hair products indicate an increased risk and recurrence of breast cancer for Black women. There is also a dearth of psychosocial interventions that address the unique needs of Black breast cancer survivors. Behavioral interventions for this population lack content on identity, hair care, and harmful environmental exposures. Interventions are urgently needed for Black breast cancer survivors to address their unique survivorship journeys and reduce harmful environmental exposures during survivorship. My goals are to develop, implement and disseminate community-based interventions that improve quality of life (QOL) and address health behaviors related to Black identity that contribute to disparities affecting cancer risk and survivorship. As a first step towards these broad goals, with this K01 proposal, I seek to develop and evaluate an intervention to improve QOL and reduce adverse chemical exposures of EDCs found in personal care products of Black breast cancer survivors, post-treatment. The proposed career development and training plan support my trajectory toward becoming an independent, community-based implementation scientist with a focus on cancer health disparities through training and experience in 1) Designing community-based multi-level interventions; 2) Assessing environmental exposures in a community-based multi-level intervention; and 3) Using implementation science to evaluate community-based interventions for Black women. This project will take place at Chapman University with mentors who are experts in training and mentoring K01 trainees and assessing the psychological, biological and social influences on women’s health outcomes (Primary: Laura Glynn, PhD, Chapman University); randomized intervention designs (Co-Mentor: Virginia Sun, PhD, RN, COH); clinical implications of intervention design for Black breast cancer survivors (Co-Mentor: Abenaa Brewster, MD, MHS, MD Anderson); environmental exposures (Advisor: Robin Dodson, ScD, Silent Spring Institute); and dissemination and implementation science (Co-Mentor: Robert Newton, PhD, Pennington Biomedical).