By Peter Sorkin
New Yorkers ages 30 to 64 are wanted for the largest medical study ever undertaken in New York that has just arrived in Queens, the nation's most ethnically diverse county.
The New York Cancer Project and New York Blood Center announced plans at a news conference last week at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens in Flushing to launch a 20-year-study to examine the genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors that contribute to cancer, the leading cause of premature death in the United States.
Although hospitals in Staten Island, Manhattan and the Bronx participating, New York Hospital Medical Center is the only Queens hospital involved in the project.
Those attending included City Councilman Sheldon Leffler (D-Hollis), who talked about his mother's death from cancer, and state Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette (D-Jackson Heights).
The New York Cancer Project is the first major collaborative undertaking of the Academic Medicine Development Company a statewide partnership of 35 leading teaching hospitals, medical schools and other research institutions.
Organizers hope to recruit 300,000 New Yorkers of various backgrounds, including Chinese, African-American, Caribbean, Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, Russian and Ashkenazi Jews to provide special insights into the incidence of cancer among New Yorkers of different ethnicities.
Multiple enrollment sites, including six academic medical centers and at least a dozen community-based health centers, will recruit and enroll 17,000 New Yorkers. Participants will be sought from religious institutions, community and corporate groups, health-related organizations, unions and the medical center itself. The initial phase of the cancer project began in the spring.
Dr. Maria Mitchell, AMDeC president and chief executive officer, said the project is an important step in the battle to prevent and treat cancer.
“The New York Cancer Project will help scientists and physicians better understand the role of lifestyle factors like diet and exercise in the skyrocketing incidence of cancer, which affects millions of American families every year,” she said. “Never before has such a comprehensive, long-term study been undertaken in New York.”
Each participant will be interviewed in a private setting about his or her personal health history, general lifestyle habits including diet and physical activity, and family medical background.
The session will also consist of a small blood donation and physical measurements including weight, height and blood pressure that take approximately one hour. All that is required of the participants will be for them to fill out a questionnaire that will be mailed to them on a biennial basis.
Dr. Dattatreyudu Nori, head of the NYHQ Cancer Center, who said the best way to treat cancer is to prevent it, commended the launching of the study.
“The New York Cancer Project will provide invaluable data in understanding genetic factors behind the incidence of cancer,” he said. “In addition, many immigrant groups such as New York's sizable Chinese community have not historically been a focus of such a large-scale study, and we are eager to help make this ground-breaking project a success in that regard.”
To enroll in the New York Cancer Project or to learn more about the study, call 1-877-NYC-PROJ or visit the web site at www.amdec.org.
