A postdoctoral research fellow in the Program for Cancer Prevention and Control at the Ruttenberg Cancer Center of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Thompson '91 is conducting a pilot study in East Harlem in which she explores the attitudes of African American women toward genetic testing for cancer. It is part of the New York City medical school's outreach, the East Harlem Partnership for Cancer Awareness, that intends to identify the barriers to cancer screening in the black and Latino communities and to develop programs that address those barriers. There is little known about genetic testing attitudes, but previous work has shown black women express more medical mistrust and are more likely to believe that cancer is unpreventable and untreatable compared to white women. Collecting the data is a long, slow process of interviews. But even before the first question can be asked, Thompson works to build trust and establish some sort of credibility in neighborhoods in which so much negative history has accumulated.
People are very wary.
These are valid concerns. While preparing her dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh, Thompson had to recruit African Americans to participate in her study. Armed with that experience, she goes to clinics and residential communities in East Harlem and other parts of the city to begin the process of developing relationships. From music to medicine Hayley Thompson came to Colgate wanting to be a music major. Advised by Professor of Psychology Jack Dovidio, she decided to go into clinical psychology with its multitude of options.