State Awards Breast Cancer Grant to IHRP Researcher

The Illinois Department of Public Health is funding the development of a new database that will lead to greater understanding of factors affecting breast cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment and survival in the state.

The $100,000 grant will allow Dr. Therese Dolecek to combine data collected by the state on breast cancer cases and hospital discharge records with other information, such as socioeconomic data from the 2000 census and distances from mammography centers to residences of breast cancer patients. 

Dr. Dolecek is a research associate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health.

As part of the Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, Dr. Dolecek and colleagues have been working with data on breast cancer cases from the Illinois State Cancer Registry.  The new funding will allow them to expand this work through the linkage of additional data sources.  The researchers intend the combined database to serve as a foundation for new research into breast cancer disparities among Illinois women.

Dr. Dolecek’s grant is funded by the Ticket for the Cure, a lottery ticket designed to fund breast cancer detection, education, research, and patient services throughout the state. Her research grant was one of 14 announced by the IDPH on February 8.

Garth Rauscher, assistant professor of epidemiology at UIC, also was awarded a $100,000 grant through Ticket for the Cure to study “Ethnic Disparity in Symptomatic Breast Cancer Awareness Following Routine Mammography.”