Is The Cost Of Beauty Putting Black Women At Risk? The IEAAWC Hair And Health Study
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: The Inland Empire African American Wellness Collaborative (IEAAWC) group is located in the Inland Empire (IE) region of Sothern California. The IE has been called the Third California by the Brookings Institution to describe its staggering disparities in socio-economic and health indicators. One of the many health disparities in our region is found in breast cancer (BC): Compared to other racial/ethnic groups, African American/Black (AA/B) women are more likely to get BC, die from BC, be diagnosed with an advanced stage of BC, and get BC when they are younger. At the same time, emerging evidence suggests that toxins in hair products may contribute to BC risk [17,18]. AA/B women use hair products such as relaxers at higher rates, use products that contain more hormones and placenta than white women, are often exposed in utero through their pregnant mothers, and many begin a lifelong hair regimen of straightening product use as toddlers. Thus, at least some of the observed increased risk may be due to differences in exposure to these products. The goal for our pilot study came from the local women themselves: they wish for us to explore the potential role of hair product use in causing BC in local AA/B women. In response, our partnership proposes using a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach of true collaboration and empowerment to engage local AA/B women in exploring our research questions with an eye to helping us prepare for prevention and outreach.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 We will train local AA/B community women volunteers to engage other AA/B women with and without BC, their beauticians, salon owners, and AA/B men by conducting 30 personal interviews and seven group discussions to explore risks from a personal, cultural/social norms, and policy perspective. We will also identify and analyze the labels of hair products used locally and explore ingredients for potential risks using the “Skin Deep” cosmetics database. We will further explore our findings by developing surveys that we will pilot test with 140+ persons across our target groups. Throughout, we will be in partnership with the women and our Community Advisory Board to discuss and contextualize what we learned, use it for designing good questions and plan for how we will share results locally and to design a rigorous larger study.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Innovative elements
 
 
 
 
 
 While there is increasing research linking hair products to the development of BC in AA/B women, this work is new and many traditional researchers are doubtful about it. At the same time, many in the AA/B community worry about widening disparities in BC incidence and mortality and fear that hair products may be involved. IE AA/B women learned about this and wanted to study this issue locally, believing in the power of capacity building, translational research that translates scientific findings into community relevant solutions, as it is only through this type of research that we can hope to develop meaningful and culturally accepted prevention efforts that can help reduce BC disparities.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Our proposed pilot study came about due to increasing community concerns about stubborn BC health disparities and the possibility that they may, at least in part, be explained by the use of the very products AA/B women use to feel more beautiful. In response, we formed our community/academic collaborative and chose to conduct the proposed research using community involved methods and begin a systematic exploration of this issue. In addition to working with community volunteers, our study will be guided by a Community Advisory Board made up of persons who lend meaningful expertise to this challenging work.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The methods and measures developed under this pilot study will inform a full scale rigorous follow-up study. That is, the pilot study will help us to establish appropriate measurement tools, refine our research questions, develop effective participant recruitment strategies, data analysis approaches, and community outreach strategies that will be part of a larger, future study of hair product related BC risk in CA AA/B women.