In partnership with The Olive Branch of Hope, this is what we've been doing now for about eight years. We've been going to Black communities across Ontario, and doing some virtual events in Nova Scotia and other places of Canada, to basically educate and inform Black women about triple-negative breast cancer.
For the record, I would like to state that when I first applied for funding in Canada to study triple-negative breast cancer in Black women—I believe that was in 2013, and I didn't get funded—one reviewer said that my study of Black women with triple-negative breast cancer was not relevant to the Canadian context. Receiving that as a Black researcher and Black breast cancer survivor and being told that studying a very aggressive breast cancer subtype in Black women in Canada was not relevant to the Canadian context was a serious affront to me and every Black person in Canada. That hurt to the core.
Part of our mission became to ensure that we educated every Black woman about her risk. We have them fill out family history charts. To Dr. Caron's point, not everyone is aware of their family history. Again, there's a stigma. Many of us were told this person died from old age. In the Caribbean, people won't even say the word “cancer”. They say, “Oh, they had the C-word.”
We have to be aware of these cultural differences and nuances. Again, that's why, as I said, the manuscript we're writing is called “one size does not fit all”, because we have to be aware of this.