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Marvella Ford, Ph.D., an expert in health disparities and cancer prevention research at the Medical University of South Carolina, now holds a joint appointment as the SmartState endowed chair in prostate cancer disparities at South Carolina State University.
Charleston, SC - Marvella Ford missed out on a fundamental part of childhood: having grandparents to spoil and take care of her. They all died before she was born. “That’s a tremendous loss that you can never overcome. I grew up not having met or seen pictures of any of my grandparents,” she said.
Finding the answers to such questions may benefit people statewide, Ford said. “This is a cancer disparities grant, but sometimes we forget disparities refer not only to racial and ethnic disparities but also to geographic and socioeconomic disparities. Our studies will include multiple racial and ethnic groups with different levels of education and income. We really want to improve cancer outcomes for everyone in South Carolina.”
She couldn’t even find out how they died. “I was told that no one knew their causes of death. This lack of information about something so important made me decide to enter the field of health disparities research, to try to better understand the reasons behind the racial and ethnic health disparities in this country.”
Ford is now leading the effort to establish the South Carolina Cancer Disparities Research Center, designed to do exactly that. It’s funded by a $12.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute. Half of the money goes to the Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center, the other half to South Carolina State University.
Ford is the glue that brings the two universities together in her roles as a professor in the MUSC College of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences, a senior leader at the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and the SmartState endowed chair at SCSU. She’s leading the project with Judith Salley-Guydon, chairwoman of the Department of Biological and Physical Sciences at SCSU.
When it comes to cancer, “our state has glaring cancer disparities geographically, socioeconomically, and in terms of race,” Ford said. “With prostate cancer, the death rate is three times higher for black men than it is for white men. The story is the same for women in South Carolina with breast cancer. The mortality rate is much higher for black women than for white women.”
The South Carolina Cancer Disparities Research Center, also known as SC CADRE, will be guided by the belief that race and circumstances should not keep people from enjoying as long and healthy a life as possible. SC CADRE’s goals include increasing SCSU’s ability to do cancer research, conducting cutting-edge cancer disparities research, inspiring a new generation of researchers to focus on cancer disparities and getting the general public more involved in cancer research.
Lowering AGE Levels
A third piece of the SC CADRE grant focuses on lowering the levels of AGEs, or advanced glycation end products, in prostate cancer survivors. A big part of that may involve changing their diets, shifting away from cooked meat to more fruits and vegetables. Researchers will also look at whether exercise and medications can lower AGE levels and improve people’s health.
“There is a big difference in levels of AGEs between blacks and whites,” Ford said. “Blacks actually have higher levels of ages even before cancer diagnosis. They’re linked with poorer prognosis and worse outcomes in prostate cancer. The idea is, if we can drive down the level of AGEs, we can make more equitable health outcomes for blacks and whites, and it may help reduce disparity in prostate cancer survival rates.”
Buy-In from the Public
Ford said all of her team’s work is guided by input from the public. “We have community input at every step. Even in putting the grant together we went to our advisory board at the cancer center to get their input in how to proceed with developing the grant.”
The SC CADRE researchers created a community engagement panel. “It’s important to have the input of the public, especially when we’re designing clinical trials. They can tell us about how the trial might be perceived in the community. And when it comes to the end points that we think are most important, they may have other ideas we can learn from.”
Part of getting that community input involves letting people know that the researchers understand where they’re coming from, in terms of the burden of cancer in local communities. “We hear the pain. We feel the pain,” Ford said. “I want people to know we are doing everything we can to conduct research to reduce disparities in South Carolina.”
About MUSC.
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