Event Focuses on Activism to Eliminate Environmental Links to Cancer

CINCINNATI—The 10th annual "Looking Upstream for Environmental Links to Breast Cancer,” hosted by the UC Cancer Institute, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and community breast cancer advocates, will be held from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, April 12, at the University of Cincinnati’s (UC) Reading Campus, 2189 E. Galbraith Road.

This year, the focus of the event will be action and advocacy—steps currently being taken at the local and national levels to reduce known environmental exposures. Karen Miller, president of the Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition, and Laura Weinberg, president of the Great Neck Breast Cancer Coalition, will be the keynote speakers for the event.

"We’re doing something a little different that will translate what is known in research about environmental factors to actual advocacy taking place to reduce these exposures within our society,” says Susan Pinney, PhD, co-leader of the Cincinnati Cancer Center Cancer Etiology, Control and Prevention Program.

She along with her fellow program co-leader, Frank Biro, MD, will also speak.

Pinney, professor in the UC department of environmental health and associate director for population sciences at the UC Cancer Institute, will present, "Puberty Study: Ten Years of Travel from Research to Public Health and Back Again”; Biro, director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s and professor of pediatrics at the UC College of Medicine, will present "Growing Up Female Project: To Infinity and Beyond.”

The research efforts of this study investigate how environmental and genetic factors affect the onset of puberty in young girls.

This forum, presented by the Cincinnati Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP) and the Breast Cancer Registry of Greater Cincinnati (BCRGC), provides timely information on potential environmental links to breast cancer and an update on the BCERP’s ongoing research. The Cincinnati BCERP puberty study is one of the national projects funded by the National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

"This is an opportunity to hear from both local and national experts on the impact of environmental exposures on personal health as well as steps being taken to eliminate them,” says Biro. "We look forward to sharing this important information with the community with hopes of empowerment and to show that strides are being made in the fight.”

A buffet breakfast and educational materials are included in the $20 registration fee. Contact hours will be awarded to nurses who attend the entire program and complete an evaluation tool. Parking is free.

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