ABOUT THE STUDY

One woman drinks 2 glasses of wine a day and has her first baby at 40. Her next-door neighbor drinks the same amount and had her baby at the same age. All their other breast cancer risk factors are the same. Only one is diagnosed with breast cancer. Why?

LINKS TO TOPICS:

|Introduction|Goals|Methods|

INTRO:

The Marin County Department of Health and Human Services is conducting a new breast cancer research project to better understand why breast cancer risk factors do not affect all women in the same way.

The occurrence of breast cancer in Marin County is the subject of national and regional scientific interest, but here in Marin, the issue is personal for all of us. It seems that everyone knows at least one woman with breast cancer. The Marin Women’s Study will be the first breast cancer study in Marin County to look at individual risk factors linked to an analysis of biospecimens (blood and saliva samples). Blood and saliva will let us look at what is happening inside the body. We hope this new study will be one of the pieces to the puzzle we’ve been missing, the piece that will help us answer the question, “What’s happening in Marin?"

This study is a community effort in collaboration with the Marin Cancer Institute, University of California San Francisco, Buck Institute for Age Research, Kaiser Permanente San Rafael Medical Center, the Novato Community Hospital Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Zero Breast Cancer (formerly Marin Breast Cancer Watch), the Northern California Cancer Center and many local community groups.

TOP OF PAGE

GOALS:

We hope to discover–

• How risk factors vary by socioeconomic status and are associated with breast cancer risk.
• How women in Marin County are using complementary and alternative medicines (CAMS) for menopausal symptoms and how their use might relate to breast cancer risk.
• How the socioeconomic status of the communities we live in affects breast cancer risk.
• How tumor characteristics differ in women with different breast cancer risk factors.
• How alcohol and estrogen affect breast cancer risk.
• And much more…

TOP OF PAGE

METHODS:

We will ask women to fill out a questionnaire when they go in for a mammogram. Some women will also be asked to donate biospecimens (blood and saliva). Analysis of these samples will help us better understand why breast cancer risk factors do not affect all women in the same way.

See the data collection process.

TOP OF PAGE