NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — You may have heard the phrase, “cancer does not discriminate.”
Actually, it does.
Now, researchers at two Virginia medical schools are teaming up to get at the root causes of cancer disparities and promote change.
“Individuals that live in income based housing communities have higher rates of all cancer compared to the general population,” said Brynn Sheehan , director of the Research and Infrastructure Service Enterprise at Macon and Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University. “They also have a lower prevalence of cancer prevention screening.”
Sheehan is co-lead in the study which is a partnership between Eastern Virginia Medical School-ODU and Virginia Commonwealth University .
It is a five-year endeavor funded through a $9 million grant from the National Cancer Institute . It will address things such as the roles of violent crime and food insecurity in cancer risk.
“It’s all interconnected and we have acute stressors,” Sheehan said. “We have chronic stress, which is the most strongly related to cancer risk, so something like a walking intervention in Hampton Roads, especially around housing authority buildings where many residents don’t feel safe walking too far from the building.”