A new UNMC study funded by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and Pfizer, Inc., hopes to improve treatment outcomes for women under 50 in rural Nebraska who are diagnosed with breast cancer.
According to Cancer.gov, the strongest risk factor for breast cancer is age, with approximately 1 in 68 forty-year-old women developing breast cancer compared to 1 in 26 seventy-year-old women.
Professor Robin Lally of UNMC’s College of Nursing, says they plan to develop a “treatment map” focusing on some of the different challenges that younger women diagnosed with breast cancer may face.
“We’re trying to raise the physicians’ knowledge and awareness of the nuances of caring for women that are younger with breast cancer. They may have the information, but they don’t get to apply it very often because they aren’t as many younger women diagnosed with breast cancer.”
The study will involve cancer physicians in Norfolk, Grand Island and North Platte in collaboration with teams at UNMC, Nebraska Medicine and the Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. Improving telemedicine connections between the Medical Center and the out-state physicians is another goal of the study.
For more information, the website is UNMC.edu