The EMPOWER Project: Empowering Diverse Women at Elevated Risk of Breast Cancer

• In Event: 343 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 20. Health Risk

Abstract

One in eight U.S. women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, and this risk can rise to 60% or higher for women who have mutations of the BRCA genes or a strong family history of the disease. Effective biomedical mechanisms have been developed to prevent cancer among these women, but they are utilized far less frequently – and sometimes by different women – than the medical literature would recommend. Bilateral prophylactic mastectomy, for instance, is chosen by only a fifth of mutation carriers, for whom clinical recommendations consider it an option, but is also undergone by many women for whom it is unlikely to reduce risk. It is simultaneously unknown why women make the choices they do, and evident that women rarely receive the systematic information and support that would allow them to make educated, health-protective choices fully aligned with their values.
The key missing element from our ability to effectively leverage available methods of prevention is an understanding of the decision-making processes women utilize between learning that their risk is elevated and choosing a course of preventive action. Absent this link, we do not know how women decide among prevention options, how well their choices reflect their preferences, how their choices affect health, or how choices or health effects vary across sub-groups. This presentation reviews literatures relevant to women’s breast cancer prevention decisions, outlines a program of research designed to fill these critical gaps, and presents preliminary findings from the first phase of this ongoing research.

Author

• Tasleem Juana Padamsee, The Ohio State University