You’ve always wanted to do your part to end breast cancer. Now, thanks to a revolutionary international online study that uses real-time technology, you can.
The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Beckman Research Institute at the City of Hope have teamed up to identify the root causes of breast cancer, leading to prevention.
The Health of Women Study (HOW), the first-of-its-kind, aims to give all women, age 18 and older, as well as interested men, the opportunity to become partners in research by participate in the long-term cohort study.
Even if you are skittish around needles, or doctor’s offices make you break out in a cold sweat, you can do this.
By answering questions about your health, your job, your diet, and your family history, and other relevant topics, you can help foster a better understanding of breast cancer and its potential causes.
The information will be used by teams of expert epidemiologists, statisticians and clinical researchers around the world to investigate the root cause of breast cancer and look for new risk factors.
The information you provide is vital to researchers because “the majority of women who get breast cancer have none of the known clinical risk factors for the disease,” said Dr. Susan Love, president and founder of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation (DSLRF).
Dr. Love said that the research community know very little about the conditions that allow the disease to flourish.
"We have made strides in how we treat breast cancer, but we still don’t know how to prevent this disease," said Dr. Love.
“We believe a completely new kind of study that traces both healthy women and breast cancer patients and survivors, and directly involves them, as participants, will give us the data we need to find the cause and develop prevention," she said. "It’s time to shift some of our focus to preventing it altogether.”
The online and mobile platform will make it possible to capture more international relevant data than has been feasible before, and will empower consumers to become directly and actively engaged in research, said Naz Sykes, executive director of DSLRF.
“The interactive nature of the study will also allow study participants to pose questions based on their concerns, so that everyone can play a tangible role in working to end breast cancer,” she said.
Participants will benefit too. The interactive website offers useful information about breast cancer and explains why certain risk factors are associated with the disease.
Within the online and mobile community formats, users can keep a “healthy note” diary to track important health events in real time. Users can also view quick statistics on their data to see how it compares to the rest of the cohort (user group).
“Cohort studies are the most valuable form of study in epidemiology, but in the past, they have been extremely costly and very difficult to manage,” said Leslie Bernstein, Ph.D., Professor and Director, Division of Cancer Etiology, Department of Population Sciences at Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, one of the study's collaborators.
“This new effort uses technology that is economical and permits us to capture behavior and lifestyle changes that impact women’s risk of cancer in real time,” she said.
To learn more about the new study and sign up, visit www.healthofwomenstudy.org/
Lynette Summerill is an award-winning writer and Scuba enthusiast living in San Diego, CA with her husband and two beach loving dogs. In addition to writing about cancer-related issues for EmpowHER, her work has been seen in newspapers and magazines around the world.
Sources:
“Breast Cancer Research Study Innovates at the Intersection of Crowdsourcing and Health 2.0 to Find the Cause and Develop Prevention”. DSLRF Release. 1 Oct. 2012.
Dr. Susan G. Love, written statement. 27 September 2012
Naz Sykes, written statement. 1 October 2012
Leslie Bernstein, Ph.D. City of Hopewritten statement, 2 October 2012
Reviewed October 2, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith