• 2/24/2005
  • Angela Stewart
  • The Star Ledger (www.nj.com/news/ledger)

A newly awarded $1.2 million federal grant will help researchers unlock the mysteries behind why minorities in New Jersey suffer worse cancer outcomes than whites, with interventions developed to alleviate those causes, officials announced yesterday at a Jersey City news conference.

The three-year grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health, will establish a Center for Excellence in Health Disparities, to be led by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. The university will collaborate with two other institutions — the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick and New Jersey City University in Jersey City– on7 the project that will, among other things, seek to find the underlying causes of cancer disparities.

“New Jersey is the most racially and ethnically diverse state in the nation and is consistently ranked among the top 10 states in the nation with the highest cancer morbidity and mortality among minority populations,” said Rep. Robert Menendez (D-13th Dist. ), who helped secure the funding, along with Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Rep. Steven Rothman (D-9th Dist.).

African-American men in New Jersey are more than twice as likely as white men to die from prostate cancer, said Diane Brown, who heads UMDNJ’s Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities, founded in 2001. The new program, initially targeting its outreach in Newark and Jersey City, will build upon the efforts already underway at UMDNJ, where a cancer center is set to open on the Newark campus in the summer of 2006.

African-Americans won’t be the only targeted group. Latinos also have a higher incidence of certain types of cancers, including those affecting the stomach, cervix, liver and gall bladder, Brown noted.

“As the center develops, other New Jersey communities will be included,” she said.

In addition to helping increase the number of minorities screened for cancer, the project also will work to enroll more minorities in trials where new cancer therapies are being tested. Ronald Morton Jr., director of urologic oncology at the Cancer Institute, said researchers are likely to find disparities arising from a number of things, including environmental causes and problems with access to health care.

“It’s not like some of the other problems where you can say it’s this one gene,” he said.

Rhonda Jones, 50, of Irvington, is an African-American cancer-survivor who had never even heard of throat or tongue cancer until she was diagnosed with both a little more than a year ago.

“You know your body and you know when something is wrong,” said Jones, who said weight loss and losing her voice were symptoms of her disease.

Jones ended up undergoing cancer surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation, an experience she described as “very scary.” Today, Jones, a one-time American Cancer Society outreach worker, readily shares her experience because she finds that many minorities are still afraid to admit they have the disease.

“They think it’s taboo, like a curse or something. It’s okay to share your information so you can help somebody else,” she said.