Scientists at Georgetown University in Washington and Boston University, conducted a 20-year study of 45,000 African American women as part of the Black Women’s Health Study. One finding of the study is that Black women who exercise at least once each week were less likely to develop an aggressive form of breast cancer than Black women who did not exercise. The data also showed that Black women who exercised for three or more hours a week were 47 percent less likely to develop aggressive breast cancer than Black women who exercised one hour per week.
Lucile Adams-Campbell, a professor of oncology at Georgetown and one of the lead researchers, stated, “Knowing that exercise may protect against breast cancers that disproportionately strike Black women is of great public health importance.”
Dr. Adams-Campbell also serves as the director of the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and is associate dean of community health and outreach at the Georgetown University Medical Center. Before joining the faculty at Georgetown in 2008, Dr. Adams-Campbell served for 13 years as director of the Howard University Cancer Center.
Professor Adams-Campbell holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from Drexel University in Philadelphia. She earned a Ph.D in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh.
