Breast cancer study wants black women's input

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Calling all sisters to help your sistagirls out.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is recruiting 50,000 volunteers, especially minority women, to participate in an important research project about breast cancer. The goal of the 10-year confidential Sister Study is to determine the genetic and environmental causes of the potentially deadly disease by tracking the cancer-free sisters of women with breast cancer.

To ensure that the study benefits all women, however, the researchers having been trying hard to get a broad range of participants from every state, background, occupation, race and ethnicity. To date, most participants have been white, middle-class women.

"We already know about breast cancer and white women," said Dr. Dale Sandler, the principal investigator of the Sister Study and chief of the epidemiology branch of NIEHS. "It's important to have information about everybody."

But we know how busy the sistagirls are with taking care of everybody but themselves. And we know how wary the sistagirls can be of studies in general.

No medication, no medical visits, no tedious medical record-keeping, not even any changes in daily habits or diet are necessary. The Sister Study is not a clinical trial; it is an observational study. All that is required are a simple blood test, a home dust sample and completion of a telephone questionnaire. There also is an annual review of that data.

Elena M. Alvarado, president and chief executive officer of the National Latina Health Network, has been a participant in the Sister Study for six months.

"It's very important that communities of color are involved," she said, because oftentimes they are underrepresented. Ms. Alvarado is "confident" about the care and professionalism of the diversified Sister Study staff that will look at how women's genes and things women come in contact with at home, at work and in the community may influence breast cancer risk.

Ms. Alvarado was one of the speakers last week at "Am I My Sister's Keeper? Building a Legacy: Making a Difference With Breast Cancer," a forum at Shiloh Baptist Church on Ninth Street Northwest for NIEHS in coordination with the Mayor's Interfaith Council.

The program brought together grass-roots groups, social organizations and clergy, including the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and Sisters Network Inc., to act as outreach liaisons to distribute life-saving information about breast cancer and to recruit minority women for the study.