Breast cancer is the most aggressive cancer in women and the second most common cancer worldwide, according to the World Cancer Research Fund.
Seeing that breast cancer is chronically threatening women’s health, Marcelle Dougan expressed her passion for public health by creating a lifestyle mobile application for breast cancer survivors.
Dougan is an assistant professor in San Jose State’s Department of Health Science and Recreation. As an epidemiologist, Dougan is interested in digital health and researching how that can be used as a tool to help people in their lives.
She emphasized the importance of accessing research outcomes and its operation.
“What does that research mean and how can people that don’t know how to access journals – how can they use that for their everyday lives?” Dougan said.
She said there are there are various health disparities, especially around poverty and around ethnicity, in many chronic diseases.
“More specifically, in the disease of breast cancer, white women are more likely to develop it compared to black women,” Dougan explained.
Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer and white women have a higher survival rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the mobile app, Dougan and her team plan to include information about diets, exercise, sleep and mind-and-body connection for women who survived or have breast cancer.
“Food is a very personal thing that’s really related to your ethnicity,” Dougan said. “But what you will find, is that a lot of the cancer-type foods that have been developed, are developed primarily for a white population.
Her goal is to include diets and foods that are suitable for different palates because most health information is not suitable to minority groups.
“Ethnic minorities can’t really use a lot of these things and even if they do, the food is not appetizing, which then could potentially lead to differences in survival,” Dougan said.
For the development and components of the app, Dougan asked SJSU media design assistant professor Tina Korani to work on the interface design.
Korani said she is always on the lookout to collaborate with faculty and professionals on mobile applications related to education, the environment and healthcare.
“I immediately accepted to work with her on this project because it allows me to make an impact on breast cancer survivor’s lives through my contributions,” Korani said.
Before packaging everything into an app, the first step was to recruit people to form a focus group.
Archbishop Mitty High School senior Elina Xie was in charge of spreading the word through social media for the recruitment.
Xie reached out to Dougan in June of last year in hopes of gaining research experience in public health. She is now a lab intern, proactively helping with the project.
“I knew I wanted to study the people-aspect of health, as opposed to the more technical, molecular aspect of health, in college,” Xie said.
She has previous experience researching antibiotics, antibiotic resistance and how the antibiotics affect different types of cancer therapies.
Xie added, “I was specifically interested in examining health issues related to women, like breast cancer, endometriosis as well as how people with different socioeconomic backgrounds experience ‘health’ differently.”
As she is graduating high school this year, Xie plans on pursuing a bachelor’s in health science or public health and eventually obtaining a master’s degree.
Dougan has formed partnerships with local cancer care organizations in the Bay Area, ultimately improving her process and credibility for the app.
“Currently, I am seeking Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, which is the largest county public hospital because any research that you do, has to go through [IRB],” Dougan said.
She explained that the IRB is made of different experts who look at the research in order to protect the human subject.
Dougan has already gone through the IRB at SJSU, as well as the hospital.
“I am passionate about making a difference in the community where I live and work and so Valley Medical Center provides a window into the community that it serves,” Dougan said.
