TOUCHBBCA Supports and Equips the Black Breast Cancer Community
TOUCH, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance (TOUCHBBCA), was honored to be included in the September 2023 White House Cancer Moonshot℠ Fact Sheet and continues working to improve the lives of Black breast cancer patients and their loved ones.
“Our mission is to eradicate Black Breast Cancer,” said Ricki Fairley, chief executive officer and co-founder of TOUCHBBCA. “We are committed to aggressively tackling breast cancer disparities and, at a minimum, achieving mortality rate parity for Black women. As an alliance, we are dedicated to collaborative action and applaud both the Cancer Moonshot and the National Cancer Institute for the measurable goals of the National Cancer Plan, which serves as a clear and deliberate call-to-action for our entire cancer ecosystem.”
Ms. Fairley continued, “The time is now to advance science and improve prevention, detection, care, and survivorship for Black women at risk for and diagnosed with breast cancer. In alignment with the National Cancer Plan, we are excited to challenge the status quo by driving change with metrics-driven programming, bringing the patient voice to science, nurturing advocacy leadership, all while helping patients cope with this horrible disease.”
TOUCHBBCA is committed to the goals of the National Cancer Plan by:
Eliminating Inequities. This goal is foundational to our work. Black breast cancer patients have a 41% higher mortality rate than white patients as well as the lowest five-year survival rate of any race or ethnicity. Black women under age 35 get breast cancer at two times the rate of white women and die at three times the rate. We believe that to create sustainable, empowered change, we must build the agency, health literacy, and self-advocacy of Black women. We equip and motivate Black breast cancer patients to demand the care they deserve.
Developing Effective Treatments. Our When We Tri(al) movement seeks to advance breast cancer science for Black women by motivating breast cancer clinical trial participation in our community, thereby helping to develop more effective treatments for Black patients. Our provocative, tested communication and community-based programs have delivered 19,000 Black women into clinical trial portals.
Preventing Cancer, Detecting Cancers Early, and Optimizing the Workforce. Our For the Love of My Gurls campaign aims to educate, equip, and empower young Black women without a breast cancer diagnosis to understand and minimize their breast cancer risk via awareness, action, and self-advocacy. In just two years, For the Love of My Gurls has reached over 850,000 young Black women and touched (educated deeply) nearly 85,000. Under this campaign, TOUCHBBCA operates a Historically Black Colleges and Universities Internship that educates future health care professionals about Black Breast Health and cancer. Our goal is to reach young Black students early in the workforce pipeline and support them with awareness and mentorship.
Engaging Every Person. TOUCH Care offers 24/7 Black nurse navigation services to Black individuals diagnosed with breast cancer who are enrolled in select clinical trials. Additionally, TOUCH works with pharmaceutical partners and research sites to make clinical trial education, recruiting, staffing, and logistics reflect the needs of the Black community and increase trial participation with the goal of enrollment that is commensurate with the burden of disease for Black women. TOUCH Care will eventually be available to all Black breast cancer patients.
Maximizing Data Utility and Developing Effective Treatments. Our recent Grand Cancer Challenge award as part of the SAMBAI team has enabled us to take TOUCHBBCA global, tackling cancer inequities in populations of African ancestry. SAMBAI is the first Grand Cancer Challenge awardee to focus on health disparities, with an integrated approach that includes social determinants of health, environmental exposures, genetic contributions, and tumor biology as they relate to cancer outcomes. We are ecstatic to build a comprehensive, culturally agile patient engagement ecosystem driven by patients, survivors, and caregivers with lived breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer experience. We will humanize this preemptive cancer research with education, support, and resources.