Funded by Hooters of America, LLC
Immunotherapy is a new treatment that uses certain parts of a person’s immune system to fight cancer. It is now used in combination with chemotherapy to treat a specific group of women with triple negative breast cancer who have disease that has spread to multiple parts of their bodies and who are not candidates for surgery.
Very few African American women were enrolled on clinical trials of immunotherapy. Therefore, we do not know if immunotherapy will have the same results in African American women as it does in Caucasian women.
The aim of our study is to increase awareness and education in African American women on the use of immunotherapy in breast cancer and to increase enrollment of African American women in a specific clinical trial which will open at the Winship Cancer Institute and Grady Memorial Hospital studying the combination of radiation and immunotherapy in women with triple negative breast cancer. We will accomplish this through a social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, patient educational pamphlets throughout Winship Cancer Institute and Grady Memorial Hospital and the support of an African American clinical research coordinator.
Through our program, we hope to increase the enrollment of African American women onto our immunotherapy clinical trial and answer important questions about the use of immunotherapy in African American women. If successful, the content we develop will set the stage for other educational material aimed at increasing African Americans enrollment on trials of immunotherapy regardless of disease site.
