M. D. Anderson expands peer counseling program for African-American breast cancer...( desire 3) coping with infertility or c...),Health

The year-long SPIRIT pilot project, which began in January 2002, enrolled 48 African-American breast cancer survivors in Houston to take part in the free, 3-session peer counseling program. Preliminary findings, which were presented at the 2003 Sisters Network Annual Meeting in April, indicated that the program was successful in improving women's knowledge and decreasing their sexual and menopause symptoms, as well as improving their overall distress levels.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women, second only to lung cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, there will be an estimated 211,300 new cases of breast cancer in the United States in 2003, and about 39,800 women are expected to die of the disease. Of these, an estimated 20,000 African-American women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer, and about 5,700 are expected to die of the disease.

Additionally, African-American women have not benefited as much as women of other ethnicities from advances in breast cancer treatment and are more likely than Caucasian women to be diagnosed before menopause, Schover says.

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Contact: Stephanie Hughes Koenig
steph.hughes@gabbe.com
212-220-4444
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
1-Oct-2003