Hispanic women focus of cancer study

Hutchinson center gets $10M to study cancer in Hispanic women
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle), May 3, 2010

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle said it’s been awarded a $10.2 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to study breast cancer disparities in Hispanic women.

Principal investigator for the initiative will be Beti Thompson, a member of the center’s public health sciences division. Her research topics include finding ways to improve mammography screening rates among Seattle-area Latinas and understanding the relationship between dietary patterns and risk of obesity in Hispanic women, the center said.

“Once Latinas come to live in this country, within a generation their risk of breast cancer increases tremendously and approaches that of non-Hispanic whites, so we think something about their lifestyle before they immigrate to the U.S. protects them,” Thompson said in a statement.

The funds come from the National Institutes of Health’s Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities program.