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Williams hopes studies will help reduce deaths among Ghanaian women
July 1, 2009
Ghana is home to many scenic waterfalls such as this one where Arnold School student Michelle Williams pauses on a visit to the countryside.
Sweltering in equatorial heat, amidst power outages and bad tap water are not great conditions for doing public health research.
But Arnold School doctoral student Michelle Williams says they’re small prices to pay for knowledge that could help save women from dying of breast and cervical cancer.
Williams is spending this summer doing research in Kumasi, Ghana, a city of 1.5 million about 300 miles north of the equator.
She is stationed at the Peace and Love Hospital, a breast cancer center dedicated to mass public breast cancer awareness and free screening of Ghanaian women. She will also be working with staff from Kwame Nukrumah University of Science and Technology and Dr. Baffour Awuah, the head of the oncology unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
Williams came to Ghana, a West African nation about the size of Oregon, as part of the National Institutes of Health Minority Health International Research program.The particular program she’s participating in is hosted by her alma mater, Florida A&M University.
“After reading more about it, I thought that this would be the perfect fit for me because I am extremely interested in Global Health,” said Williams, a graduate student in the Arnold School’s Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior.
“Cervical cancer and breast cancer are two leading causes of cancer death among women in Ghana,” Williams said. “I plan to do an assessment of the average stage at which breast cancer is detected among the women and men who visit the hospital.
“In addition, I will be investigating the impact of cultural and sexual health beliefs on cervical and breast cancer screening behaviors of women in Kumasi.”
Formally, the study is titled “The Effect of Cultural and Sexual Health Beliefs on the Breast Cancer and Cervical Cancer Screening Behavior of Women in Kumasi.”
The aim of the research is to help develop cancer screening messages that are effective and culturally appropriate for Ghanaian women.
Dr. Beatrice Wiafe-Addai, president of Breast Care International, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Peace and Love Hospital, says “about five million of the 22 million population of Ghana, mainly women, are at risk of breast cancer.”
Williams’ family and friends have been able to share in her African adventure through a blog she’s posting this summer. With reports on her travels about the country, it’s generously illustrated with snapshots of the Ghanaian people and landscapes.
“I’ve been able to travel to a few different regions of Ghana. And I was surprised by how drastically different they are. Some areas, like Accra (the national capital), remind me of New York City, and other areas, are much less developed. I have been really impressed by how welcoming everyone has been, especially at the hospital I’m working in,” she said.
