The NIEHS held a celebration on June 18th that included Juneteenth lectures, ideological discussions, health webinars and engagement with local community organizations to recognize the past and improve the future. Dr. Melissa Davis, founding director of the Institute for Translational Genomic Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, delivered the Juneteenth lecture. The federal holiday on June 19 marks the end of slavery in the United States.
“Juneteenth reminds us that we must remain committed to our collective commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we must do this in every aspect of our lives,” NIEHS Director Dr. Rick Wojcik said in his opening remarks. “NIEHS is committed to creating a world in which freedom, justice, and equality are a reality for all.”
Identifying health disparities
In her talk, titled “Race, Place and Space in Cancer Disparities,” Davis described how her research integrates social determinants of health, environmental exposures, genetics and tumor biology to better understand the disproportionate incidence of cancer in people of African descent.
Historical racism has created barriers and delays in care that remain today, Davis said. But [genetic] Ancestry also influences the development of cancer: For example, Davis’s research has found a correlation between ancestry from Western sub-Saharan Africa and the development of triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive form of cancer.
“This is an incredible time to study cancer because we can collect all these different data elements from each individual patient,” Davis says. “The vision is that each patient will be able to receive treatment that’s customized to all the components that make up the whole person: their family history, their biomarkers, where they live, what they’ve been exposed to.”
Davis recently received a $25 million grant from Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute to lead a global team investigating cancer disparities from social, ancestral, molecular and biological perspectives.
Their mission, Davis says, is to provide a data repository with detailed information on 40,000 people with breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer. These cancers are typically more aggressive and diagnosed at younger ages in black people, Davis says. Participants will undergo whole-genome sequencing and in-depth interviews to collect information about their lived experiences, where they live, potential exposures, and social trauma.
“Dr. Davis’s talk was scientifically excellent and highly relevant to the mission of NIEHS and the anniversary of Juneteenth,” said NIEHS Deputy Director Trevor Archer, PhD. “She skillfully combined the historical context of slavery and the science of environmental health disparities with genomics, epigenomics, and exposomics to show the impact of our shared history on the biological and medical challenges currently facing African Americans, and indeed all Americans.”
Driving equitable change
In addition to in-person activities, NIEHS partnered with Advocates for Eight Changes for Racial Equity (8CRE, pronounced Acre) to offer “19 Days of Health. ” The virtual program, held June 1-19, included webinars on health and suggested activities for economic, physical, intellectual, mental, emotional and psychological wellness.
As an official advisory group to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 8CRE partners with NIH on a variety of equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. The eight changes were proposed by members of the NIH community in 2020 to promote compassion, respect, and understanding for everyone in the workplace. For more information and to support the group, please visit their website at support8cre.com.
(Lindsay Key is a contract writer in the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Affairs.)
