September 14, 2003

BY JANET RAUSA FULLER Staff Reporter

Why are blacks and Hispanics twice as likely to die from breast cancer and other cancers as whites?

Why do black women develop breast cancer at earlier ages than white women?

These are among the troublesome questions researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago want to begin answering with the help of a major grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The federal agency is doling out $60.5 million over the next five years to fund eight Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities nationwide to figure out how to narrow those gaps.

UIC and the U. of C. will be home to two of the eight centers. Researchers will build on efforts of the NIH National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

"Much of what needs to be done to end health disparities rests right here in Chicago," Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Claude Allen said Friday in announcing the grants at UIC's College of Medicine on the Near West Side. The Chicago centers will gather data, track patients and form focus groups within specific areas of the city, mostly minority and lower-income neighborhoods on the South Side.

UIC's $7.27 million grant will go toward addressing the social, environmental and medical factors that contribute to the unusually high death rates among black and Hispanic women with breast cancer. The goal by the end of the second year is to have community-based intervention programs in place in five neighborhoods, said Richard Warnecke, director of the UIC center.

Working with researchers in Nigeria, the U. of C. will use a $9.7 million grant to study why African-American and Nigerian women develop breast cancer earlier than white women and in more advanced stages.

Barbara Akpan, a former ER nurse at U. of C. Hospitals, knows all too well how far awareness can take women like herself who are susceptible to cancer. After skipping an annual mammogram, Akpan, 53, went in for another and was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy and underwent radiation and now is an advocate for a group called Promoting, Celebrating and Embracing the Health of African-American Women.