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Delaware worst in nation for Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Christiana Care educates public

WIlliam Schmitt, Christiana Care
Zhora Ali-Khan Catts, MS, Director of Cancer Genetic Counselling at Christiana Care, addresses participants at the BRENDA training session for volunteers at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute

Christiana Care Health System is launching a campaign to educate women in Delaware about a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer.

Triple Negative Breast Cancer often spreads quickly and has fewer treatment options. It is also more prevalent in Delaware than any other state, especially among women in the African American and Hispanic communities, according to the National Cancer Institute. But researchers are not sure why.

Christiana Care is attempting to get its message out to African American and Hispanic women. It held its second training session Monday for women interested in becoming community instructors on Triple Negative Brest Cancer.  Those instructors will use the acronym BRENDA to promote things like breastfeeding, healthy diet and exercise.

Zohra Ali-Khan Catts, MS is the Director of Cancer Genetic Counseling at Christiana Care. She was one of the speakers at the event.

“Some of them will go back to their churches, some will go to their communities where they have different outreach programs that happen, some will go to their neighbors and friends and kind of educate them, their sororities that they are participating in,” said Ali-Kahn Catts. “So there are a lot of avenues.”

Ali-Khan Catts adds while African American and Hispanic women are more likely to contract this form of cancer, they make up far less of the women seeking genetic testing to see if they carry genes associated with it.

“When we look at the numbers, we know that more African American individuals have Triple Negative Breast Cancer but yet they are a smaller percentage of our registry,” she said. “So that doesn’t make sense when you think about, ‘who should we be seeing?’”

22 woman registered for Monday's event, 14 of whom said they want to be community instructors.

Ali-Khan Catts says Christiana Care will follow up with each individual community instructor to asses the efficacy of the program. She says the health system is also researching potential causes of Triple Negative Breast Cancer to explain the First State's high rate.

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