Stacey Young-McCaughan, RN, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, will be educating cancer survivors about the benefits of exercise.
Printer Friendly Format

Contact: Elizabeth Allen, 210-450-2020

SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 28, 2011) – An $890,659 state grant designed to expand the known benefits of exercise to more cancer survivors will kick off a research-based program led by Stacey Young-McCaughan, RN, Ph.D., at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio’s Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC).

The grant is one of two Health Science Center awards from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute (CPRIT) that were announced Jan. 27. The second grant of $297,173 was awarded to Deborah Parra-Medina, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the Health Science Center’s Institute for Health Promotion Research.

“I am proud and excited about these major grant awards from CPRIT, recognizing the superb quality of prevention science here at the CTRC and the UT Health Science Center,” said CTRC Director Ian M. Thompson Jr., M.D. He added that CTRC physicians and scientists are convinced that preventing cancer, including the known benefits of exercise, will improve patients’ experience with the disease.

The focus of this round of CPRIT funding is to make evidence-based cancer prevention practices more widely available, said Dr. Young-McCaughan, a professor in the School of Medicine’s psychiatry department.

Researching the relationship between exercise and cancer prevention
Her research and that of many others shows tangible benefits of regular exercise for cancer survivors, she said, but making it a widespread practice is a big task.

“What we want to do is take what we know from the research and offer that program to patients diagnosed with cancer in Bexar County — but if people are willing to come from farther out, we want to see them, too.”

Participants will get complete physical assessments and have fitness programs designed for them that they can practice either at the facility or in their homes. They’ll also be asked to come in for further assessments, both to make sure they’re doing well and to give feedback to researchers.

That feedback means the program will continue to produce more research data on the links between cancer prevention and health.

Most of the data currently comes from early-stage breast cancer patients, Dr. Young-McCaughan said. This program will give researchers the opportunity to learn more about the role exercise plays for lung, pancreatic and brain cancer patients.

Deborah Parra-Medina, Ph.D., M.P.H., professor of epidemiology and biostatistics in the Institute for Health Promotion Research, has created a peer-education and outreach program to teach Latina mothers and daughters about receiving the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.

Preventing cervical cancer among Latinas
Dr. Parra-Medina will use her $297,000 grant in a peer-education and outreach program.

The program will train “promotoras,” or community health workers, assisted by female college students, to educate Latina mothers and daughters living in Texas-Mexico border communities about cervical cancer risk factors and the HPV vaccine. The vaccine prevents cervical cancer, she said.

“We really need to promote the use of the vaccine in populations at risk, and in the Rio Grande Valley we have very high rates of cervical cancer,” Dr. Parra-Medina said.

###
The Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas. A leader in developing new drugs to treat cancer, the CTRC Institute for Drug Development (IDD) conducts one of the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug programs in the world, and participates in development of cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. For more information, visit www.ctrc.net.