Shelley White-Means Ph.D., a professor of health economics and the director of the Consortium for Health Education, Economic Empowerment and Research at UT Health Science Center in Memphis, has received a $1.5 million, four-year grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to explore the root causes of the disparity in breast cancer survival of Black women compared to white women.
Dr. White-Means and a team will look beyond the social determinants of health to explore what she terms “the intersectionality of race, residential segregation and poverty as a driver of health disparities in breast cancer.” The goal is to identify effective public policy interventions and strategies to change the picture for Black women diagnosed with breast cancer.
The long-term goal is to identify interventions and policy solutions that transform disparities that are rooted in seemingly unalterable place-related community factors.
Dr. White-Means has spent her career exploring the racial disparity in outcomes for breast cancer survival. While the overall incidence of breast cancer is lower in Black women, they are 1.4 times more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.
She has looked at the perspectives of breast cancer survivors, attitudes and practices of the health care community, cultural and genetic issues, geographic location, and other factors that contribute to this disparity in breast cancer survival of Black women compared to white women in Memphis and elsewhere.
“I want to know why,” she says. “Why is it that we have this higher death rate among Black women compared to white women? What is going on in Memphis? We have a high-quality medical system, we have a high-quality cancer center, we have all this phenomenal care system. Why is it that Black women are dying more than white women?”