Francine Laden
Harvard University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Breast tissue looks different on a mammogram from woman to woman. Dense breast tissue is one of the strongest known risk factors for breast cancer.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Earth & Environmental Science
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
breast cancer
mammographic density
digital mammography
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Determine how air pollution, ultraviolet radiation, radon, demographic factors and social determinants of health relate to mammographic density, texture and deep-learning risk scores in Nurses' Health Study 3 participants.
- Measure how these environmental and social exposures relate to changes in mammographic features from before to after menopause, using digital mammograms from 4,000 diverse US nurses.
- Assess the joint effects of multiple environmental exposures and social determinants of health together on baseline percent mammographic density and imaging features, and on their change over time.
More about the research
Finding everyday exposures that change breast density could reveal ways to lower risk. This project asks how a person's surroundings and social circumstances shape these mammogram features.
Why it matters
Breast cancer risk differs by socioeconomic status and by region of the US. By showing which environmental and social exposures change breast density and other mammogram risk markers, this work could guide breast cancer prevention for individuals and populations. It could also improve risk assessment and inform policies on pollution and social conditions, with the goal of reducing the burden of breast cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
A. Heather Eliassen
Harvard University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Continue long-term follow-up of the Nurses' Health Study II, a cohort of 116,430 women, updating diet, lifestyle, medication and medical data and tracking cancer diagnoses and deaths.
Adetunji Toriola
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 210 high-risk premenopausal women whether two doses of denosumab, a drug that blocks RANKL signaling, reduce volumetric mammographic density measured by Volpara at 12 months.
Juan Cardet
University of South Florida, FL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether Black and Latinx adults with moderate-to-severe asthma have distinct SDOH exposomes, sets of social and environmental exposures, that link to worse asthma, using PREPARE trial data with geocoded SDOH measures.
The school
Harvard University: 42 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 712 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.