University of California, San Francisco San Francisco, California
Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Member and Co-Leader of the Cancer Control Program, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Assessing the multi-level factors associated with overall and early-onset breast cancer risk among Asian American ethnic groups.
Dr. Gomez’s team has shown that breast cancer risk in Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area is rapidly increasing, signaling a shift in breast cancer risk in this population. To address this emerging disparity, her team will determine the factors that contribute to the increasing rates of breast cancer in Asian American women and assess multiple factors specifically associated with overall and early-onset breast cancer risk in this group. Since prior studies of Asian populations have highlighted the vast heterogeneity in sociodemographic and risk factor profiles, Dr. Gomez hopes that these epidemiologic studies will uncover novel breast cancer risk factors and address the emerging trend of the high burden of breast cancer in Asian American women.
Dr. Gomez and her colleagues are focusing on the roles of structural and social determinants including structural racism, experiences with discrimination, and levels of stress on breast cancer risk. To address this question, they are establishing a biorepository of patient samples from 200 newly diagnosed patients recruited from the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry as well as 200 age- and ethnicity-matched controls. This will enable her team to assemble multi-level data including genetic, tumor genomic, biomarkers (e.g., biomarkers of stress and biological aging), and socioeconomic determinants to identify those factors that contribute to the increasing rates of breast cancer among Asian American women. In the first year of the study, her team developed the infrastructure needed to proceed with this study, obtained the necessary regulatory approvals, and have developed an epidemiologic survey that will help to recruit participants.
In the coming year, Dr. Gomez will open the study for enrollment and collect and analyze the data from participants—this will enable her team to gain a comprehensive picture of how structural and social determinants of health, genetics, and biologic markers contribute To improve recruitment to this study, they will translate the epidemiological survey they have created and expand the catchment area to include Los Angeles County in addition to the San Francisco Bay area.
Scarlett Gomez, PhD is a Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Co-Leader of the Cancer Control Program of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on cancer health disparities and understanding its multilevel drivers. Her studies incorporate multiple approaches to focus specifically on discrimination, cultural factors, immigration-related issues, and contextual-level influences relating to disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes.
Dr. Gomez has served on advisory committees, working groups, and think tanks that contribute to the national discussion around cancer health disparities. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Cancer and the Journal of Clinical Oncology and serves as Deputy Editor for the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. In addition, Dr. Gomez is the Director of the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry at UCSF.
2022
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