Public health researchers play a critical role in cancer prevention by addressing the disease at the population level. Tobacco use, unhealthy diets, sedentary lifestyles, and environmental exposures are just some of the environmental and behavioral influences that public health professionals focus on to reduce risk factors.
Promoting early detection and screening are also valuable tools. Dr. Valerie Paz Soldan, associate professor of tropical medicine, has been working to improve the fragmented and duplicative processes to screen for cervical cancer in Peru. Her work is especially challenging in isolated areas like the city of Iquitos, which is situated in the Peruvian Amazon and only accessible by river or air. The region has the highest incidence of cervical cancer in Peru.
She has also researched how stigma adds a significant challenge to the detection and prevention of cervical cancer. Her research showed how some women refrained from being screened for HPV infection to avoid the implication that they are promiscuous. Even some health professionals characterized the disease as something “easy women” get.
Health disparities impact populations across a wide variety of cancers, including breast cancer. Alumna Dr. Janeen Azare (MSPH EHS ’94) works as a charter member of Pfizer’s Diversity in Clinical Trials Center of Excellence to help enroll a diverse patient population so that the pharmaceutical’s products can be beneficial for more patients.
Louisiana is ranked 5th in the nation for all cancer mortality, with an 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans representing some of the highest incidence rates in the world. Because of this, Dean Thomas LaVeist has made cancer prevention and control a significant strategic priority for the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, with the goal of bringing a Comprehensive Cancer Center to the state to provide transdisciplinary research as a bridge between science and practice.
With that goal in mind, he recently hired Dr. Shalini Kulasingam who will serve as the founding director of the school’s Center for Cancer Prevention and Control. Kulasingam will also serve as the associate director of population science at the Tulane Cancer Center and her leadership will extend to the Louisiana Cancer Research Center.
