20 Lives, 20 Ways: Dr. Heather Greenlee

In honor of our 20th Anniversary year, Women At Risk is profiling 20 individuals whose lives have been touched by some aspect of the many research, education, and support programs for women at high risk for and with breast cancer we have offered over the past two decades.

9. Dr. Heather Greenlee
Dr. Greenlee is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Oncology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2006, she received a research grant from Women A Risk to study the effects of physical activity and dietary change in minority breast cancer survivors. This year, WAR awarded Dr. Greenlee another grant to study a dietary intervention among Hispanic breast cancer survivors and their female first-degree relatives.

Tell us about your first research study that was funded by Women At Risk. WAR gave me my first grant to study lifestyle modifications on breast cancer survivors. The grant provided funds to pilot a community-based physical activity and dietary change intervention among overweight and sedentary minority breast cancer survivors, including women of Hispanic and African descent. The study paid for 6-month memberships to a local Curves fitness center, and women also participated in nutrition education sessions. The study showed that the Curves model is an effective way for breast cancer survivors to lose weight. The women loved it!

What did the grant from WAR allow you to achieve? The WAR grant has helped us obtain two subsequent grants to further our work. The first grant allowed us to expand our sample size in the above-mentioned study and measure more biomarkers. The second grant is a study funded by NCI where we are testing this model of community-based weight loss among breast and colorectal cancer survivors in a multi-site study across the United States. We will recruit female breast and colorectal cancer survivors through SWOG, an NCI cooperative group, and participants will participant in the Curves program and receive telephone-based motivational interviews via behavioral counselors.

How will this work impact the lives of breast cancer patients and survivors? Many researchers hypothesize that eating a good diet, being physically active, and achieving a health body weight after a breast cancer diagnosis will improve recurrence and survival rates, but we have limited clinical trial data on these approaches. We plan to use data from our studies to conduct a definitive study on a weight loss intervention study among breast cancer survivors.