Racial Disparities, Life Course, and Environment: Do Endocrine Disruptors Impact Breast Cancer Risk in Young, African American Women?

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge MA

05/07/2009 - 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Speakers: A. Lindsay Frazier, MD, SM, and Tamarra James Todd, PhD, MPH Seminar presenter: Devra Davis, PhD, MPH: Adult endocrine disruptor exposure and breast cancer risk

Event dates: May 7 - 8, 2009

Young African American women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer compared with their young, white counterparts, resulting in a higher burden of deaths among this subgroup of women. Established breast cancer risk factors suggest that lifetime exposure to estrogen may be involved in the onset of breast cancer. However, these risk factors fail to explain fully the racial disparity in breast cancer risk among young women. Therefore, further identification of new risk factors is needed to explain this disparity, including assessment of new exposures that are more prevalent among African American women and that occur early in life. Given the involvement of estrogen in the onset of breast cancer, endocrine disruptors that mimic estrogens may need to be further assessed, especially those chemicals more commonly used among African Americans during childhood. In this seminar, we will explore racial disparities in breast cancer risk, early life exposures that can increase the risk of breast cancer, and patterns of endocrine disruptor exposures to determine whether these chemicals can aid in explaining the racial disparity in breast cancer among young, African American women.