Komen Scholar Educational Series

Komen Scholar Event:
Breast Health Disparities & Prediction of
Breast Cancer Risk Among African American Women

November 2019

Join us for a cocktail reception and presentation featuring Komen Scholar Julie Palmer, ScD, and her research on breast health disparities and prediction of breast cancer risk among African American women.

Julie Palmer, ScD

Komen Scholar Since 2018
Boston University
Boston, MA

Julie R. Palmer, Sc.D, is Professor of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health and Associate Director of the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University. Her research interests focus on racial disparities in the occurrence of hormone receptor negative breast cancer and in breast cancer mortality.

Dr. Palmer is a founding leader of the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS), a prospective cohort study of 59,000 African American women who have been followed since 1995.

Her breast cancer research within the BWHS includes work on risk prediction models for breast cancer in African American women, identification of childbearing patterns as a contributing cause to the excess incidence of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer in African American women, and investigation of the relationship of type 2 diabetes to breast cancer risk and prognosis. Dr. Palmer received the Komen-funded AACR Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in 2017.

Dr. Palmer’s Komen Scholar grant supports work on determining the interrelationships of family history, genetic susceptibility (including BRCA1/2 mutation status), and modifiable factors on prediction of breast cancer risk among African American women.

Save the date for “A Night of Hope” Komen Scholar Educational Series event on March 5, 2020, at Moncrief Cancer Institute for a showcase featuring Dr. Partridge’s research about young women and breast cancer!