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UT Health San Antonio gets $4 million to improve cancer outreach and outcomes for Latinos

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Danya Perez, Staff writer
First Lady Jill Biden, right, hugs cancer patient Rainee Miller during a visit to the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio in 2022.

First Lady Jill Biden, right, hugs cancer patient Rainee Miller during a visit to the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio in 2022.

Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio aims to reduce cancer-related health disparities affecting the Latino community in South Texas with the help of a $4.1 million grant from the American Cancer Society.

The Avanzando Equidad de Salud: Latino Cancer Health Equity Research Center will be led by Dr. Amelie Ramirez, director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research and associate director of cancer outreach at the Mays Cancer Center. It will be housed at the Institute for Health Sciences at UT Health’s School of Medicine.

The four-year grant will allow the center to push for better cancer outreach, screening and outcomes in the Latino community.

“Our new center is really taking aim at the inequities that are keeping Latinos from equitable access to cancer care, prevention, early detection, and treatment,” Ramirez said in a written statement. “We feel that our multiple levels of activity - research, training and mentoring, and community education - can address these inequities and prevent South Texans from getting cancer, while also improving cancer outcomes, survivorship, and quality of life into the future.”

The grant’s goals don’t include a specific number of patients or individuals the center aims to reach. Its main focus will be to increase awareness at all levels, from people who can potentially seek screenings or treatment to researchers who might not be aware of inequities that keep potential patients from engaging.

Dr. Amelie Ramirez directs the Institute for Health Promotion Research and chairs the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio. She is the associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at the Mays Cancer Center.

Dr. Amelie Ramirez directs the Institute for Health Promotion Research and chairs the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio. She is the associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at the Mays Cancer Center.

Courtesy

The training or mentorship component will be offered to research scholars interested in learning more about the social determinants of health affecting these communities, which can be key in identifying what keeps an individual from getting screened and treated for cancer and beating the disease, Ramirez said.

The center will develop a tool to identify these social determinants when screening patients at UT Health San Antonio’s Mays Cancer Center, Primary Care Center, and other clinics across South Texas, she added.

The community education component will try to reach as many people as possible through Salud America!, a health equity program focused on the Latino population also ran by Ramirez. Communication to Bexar and South Texas residents will be mostly digital, through email, social media and its website.

According to Ramirez’ own research published in 2018, Latinos in South Texas are at higher risk of having to deal with several forms of cancer than many of their peers across the rest of Texas and the United States. They have a 64 percent risk of getting liver cancer, a 46 percent risk of facing cervical cancer and a 32 percent risk of facing pediatric leukemia, the study found.

Scholars will have the help of a community advisory board to guide community-responsive research, potential changes in local policy and UT Health’s own training and mentoring efforts and community partnerships.

The board’s 19 members range from cancer survivors to advocates, health providers and researchers.

“With this level of community engagement, we expect the Avanzando Equidad de Salud Center to not only improve cancer care and outcomes for Latinos and all people in South Texas, but also to advance a new generation of scholars and researchers concerned with cancer health equity,” Ramirez said in an announcement.

UT Health’s grant is part of a $54.3 million investment by the American Cancer Society to fund 89 discovery science grants.

“We are proud to announce these new grant awardees and their research projects,” William Dahut, the society’s chief scientific officer, said in a news release. “It’s very exciting, as we will fund studies that will increase our understanding of genetics and cancer risk and explore better ways to find, treat and survive cancer, focusing on equity and optimizing quality of life for cancer survivors.”

danya.perez@express-news.net| @DanyaPH

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Written By
Danya Perez

Danya Perez joined the Express-News education team in January 2021. Before moving to San Antonio, she worked as digital producer focusing mostly on newsletters at the Houston Chronicle for two years, and as an education reporter at The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, for more than four years.

Danya is originally from Mexico and was raised in the border city of El Paso, where she became the first in her family to graduate with a college degree from the University of Texas at El Paso. Before graduating, she began her journalism career as reporter and later city editor of Borderzine.com, and moved on to intern at the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Having spent most of her life in Texas, Danya considers the Lone Star State her home, with Mexico remaining an important part of her life. She is bilingual, as Spanish is the main language spoken by her family.

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