Titles and Affiliations
Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Member and Co-Leader of the Cancer Control Program,
Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Research area
Assessing the multi-level factors associated with overall and early-onset breast cancer risk among Asian American ethnic groups.
Impact
Dr. Gomez’s team has shown that breast cancer risk in Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area is rapidly increasing, signaling a shift in breast cancer risk in this population. To address this emerging disparity, her team will determine the factors that contribute to the increasing rates of breast cancer in Asian American women and assess multiple factors specifically associated with overall and early-onset breast cancer risk in this group. Since prior studies of Asian populations have highlighted the vast heterogeneity in sociodemographic and risk factor profiles, Dr. Gomez hopes that these epidemiologic studies will uncover novel breast cancer risk factors and address the increasing rates of breast cancer in Asian American women.
Progress Thus Far
Dr. Gomez and her colleagues are focusing on the roles of structural and social determinants including structural racism, experiences with discrimination, and levels of stress on breast cancer risk. To address this question, they are establishing a biorepository of patient samples from over 200 newly diagnosed patients and age- and ethnicity-matched controls recruited from the Greater Bay Area and Southern California: To date they have enrolled 270 patients and 337 controls. Using samples and participant data, her team is assembling multi-level data including genetic, tumor genomic, biomarkers (e.g., biomarkers of stress and biological aging), and socioeconomic determinants to identify those factors that contribute to the increasing rates of breast cancer among Asian American women. In preliminary analyses of the data, they found that participants with breast cancer are more likely than cancer-free controls to be foreign-born, have obese-level BMIs, older at menarche, and report experiencing less stress associated with living in the U.S. as an Asian American.
What’s Next
In the coming year, they will continue recruitment, aiming for 500 cases and 500 controls. Dr. Gomez’s team will also compare established risk factors in breast cancer and explore the role of putative risk factors, particularly those associated with stress between the two groups Of particular interest is confirming the higher risk among foreign vs. U.S.-born Asian Americans, as suggested by the preliminary results. They will also embark on a series of studies to assess genomic profiles in tumor tissue samples, seeking biomarkers indicative of epigenetic changes and biological effectors due to life course social stressors.
Read more about Dr. Gomez’s work as part of BCRF’s Health Equity Initiative here.
Biography
Scarlett Gomez, PhD is a Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Co-Leader of the Cancer Control Program of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on cancer health disparities and understanding its multilevel drivers. Her studies incorporate multiple approaches to focus specifically on discrimination, cultural factors, immigration-related issues, and contextual-level influences relating to disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes.
Dr. Gomez has served on advisory committees, working groups, and think tanks that contribute to the national discussion around cancer health disparities. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, a member of the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Cancer and the Journal of Clinical Oncology and serves as Deputy Editor for the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. In addition, Dr. Gomez is the Director of the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry at UCSF.
