Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

There are four slashes among the women’s siblings, others among her immediate family, and most family members’ symbols are partially colored in. Each partially filled circle represents a cancer diagnosis. Each slash indicates a death. Although white women get breast cancer more frequently, it’s usually diagnosed later and is more severe in African American women. Breast cancer death rates among black women were about 40 percent higher than among white women between 1999 and 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Ricks-Santi, director of the Hampton University Cancer Research Center, and another Hampton colleague, John McDonald, recently received a $446,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the genetics behind breast cancer diagnoses in African American women. In particular, they’re trying to refine genetic tests that don’t seem to be as effective for black women as white. “I wanted to make sure that there was equity in the way that genetics and genomics was being applied across populations,” Ricks-Santi said. She has a longstanding interest in cancer research, dating back to when she was a kid. Her family has a history of cancer; her father has prostate cancer. That led her to pursue an undergraduate degree at Hampton University and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in a joint cancer studies program between Georgetown and Howard University. There, she saw a trend among genetic tests for breast cancer, particularly the most common ones, BRCA 1 and 2. They are sometimes an indicator for some of the hardest to treat forms, and they’re also correlated with other kinds of cancer in men and women. At Georgetown’s cancer center, which Ricks-Santi said served mostly white and affluent patients, BRCA tests often helped doctors decide if women were candidates for preventative treatment or if they needed additional testing. At Howard’s cancer center, which served more black patients, BRCA tests often came back inconclusive. This, Ricks-Santi said, makes it hard for oncologists to come up with specific, informed approaches for patients of color. “You can’t do that if you’re not identifying the right risk factor, the right gene,” said Melissa Gomes, a mental health nurse practitioner and a co-investigator on the study. “You can’t make that personalized approach if it wasn’t based on a population that included you.” The study that Ricks-Santi and McDonald are leading uses family history and genetic data from 300 breast cancer patients at Howard, along with relatives without cancer diagnoses and other types of cancer. Ricks-Santi will conduct statistical research to find candidate genes that could provide a better test. McDonald, an assistant professor of physics, will then conduct the laboratory phase of the study, injecting those genes into cancer cells in Petri dishes to determine exactly what kind of effect those have. They’re also working with Hampton University students on the project, who will be paid with grant money. “It’s nice to create that pipeline of researchers that look like the population we want to study,” Gomes said. This round of funding lasts for three years. But they’re already looking toward the next phase. That’s where Gomes’ experience comes in, whose background is clinical psychiatry. She sees patients four days a week. In a second study, once they’ve isolated some possible genes, they want to control for those genes and then investigate social circumstances that might contribute to breast and other kinds of cancer. Gomes hopes to use her background in psychiatry and patient care to help build connections in Hampton Roads in addition to helping with the social research. “Nurses are considered one of the most trusted health professionals,” Gomes said. “I think that the community trusts us and they value their opinion.” Ricks-Santi is hopeful about this holistic approach, citing her father’s own experience. Because of the small size of his tumor, they took a more wait-and-see approach to treatment. He moved to Puerto Rico for six months to relax. It seemed to work. His prostate-specific antigen levels, an indicator of that kind of cancer, dropped significantly and have stayed stable. “It’s scary and exciting,” Ricks-Santi said. “There’s so many possibilities.” ___ Information from: Daily Press, http://www.dailypress.com/
University studies cancer risk and testing for black women.

Dr. Denis Mukwege spoke Sunday at a news conference with Nadia Murad of Iraq, with whom he shared the 9-million Swedish kronor ($1 million) prize. Mukwege was honored for his work helping sexually abused women at the hospital he founded in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Murad, a Yazidi, won for her advocacy for sex abuse victims after being kidnapped by Islamic State militants. “What we see during armed conflicts is that women’s bodies become battlefields and this cannot be acceptable during our time,” Mukwege said, speaking through a translator. “We cannot only denounce it, we now need to act.” Murad, 25, was one of an estimated 3,000 girls and women from Iraq’s Yazidi minority group who were kidnapped in 2014 by IS militants and sold into sexual slavery. She was raped, beaten and tortured before managing to escape three months later. After getting treatment in Germany, she chose to speak to the world about the horrors faced by Yazidi women, despite regardless of the heavy stigma in her culture surrounding rape. She said Sunday it was difficult “for a girl, a woman, to rise up to say that these atrocities have happened.” Mukwege, a 63-year-old surgeon, founded a hospital in the city of Bukavu and over the past 20 years has treated countless women who were raped amid fighting between armed groups seeking to control of some the central African nation’s vast mineral wealth. He expressed concern Sunday that new violence could be coming as Congo holds a general election this month. “We think the conflict might blow up around this electoral period and women and children are always the first victims of such conflicts,” he said. Along with preventing sexual violence, more effort is needed to attend to victims, Mukwege said. “We need to realize that any woman who is a victim of sexual violence within her own country — such women should be allowed treatment and it’s not only medical treatment, also psychological treatment, judicial treatment,” he said. Murad said the psychological burden of her ordeal and her subsequent work is heavy. “I don’t want to live in fear. For the last four years I have been in Germany, in a safe place, but yet I’m living frightfully,” she said. “I’m scared that these people will not just attack me or have an impact on me, but with anybody else.” Murad and Mukwege will receive their prize Monday at a ceremony in the Norwegian capital. The winners of Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry and economics will get their prizes Monday in Stockholm. No Nobel literature winner was named this year due to turmoil in the Swedish Academy, which chooses the literature winners. ___ Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story
Nobel peace winners demand action against sex abuse.

The state Department of Health said Monday it reported the death of a woman in her 60s from Hampshire County to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The department didn’t identify the woman but said she’s among 121 suspected cases of vaping-related lung injuries reported to the state since last month. The agency says nine of the cases have been confirmed as vaping-associated lung injuries and ten of them are probable cases. At least 39 of the cases have been ruled out. Gov. Charlie Baker declared a public health emergency and imposed four-month statewide ban on sales of vaping products on Sept. 24. That ban is being challenged in federal and state court.

State reports first death from vaping-related lung injury.