Candyce Kroenke, ScD, MPH, conducts research to understand how social determinants, particularly social networks and social support, influence cancer survival. Her work also focuses on examining the behavioral, treatment, and physiologic mechanisms of these relationships. In her work, she has demonstrated and replicated findings that women with larger, more supportive social networks – the web of social relationships that surround an individual - have longer breast cancer-specific survival after diagnosis. However, because racial/ethnic minorities tend to be underrepresented in breast cancer cohorts, her work has also expanded to encompass health disparities.

The current R01 award enables Dr. Kroenke's team the opportunity to examine the role of neighborhood and individual social networks and ethnic enclaves among Asian and Latina immigrant women on health behaviors and breast cancer outcomes. Part of the excitement behind this work is due to the ability to examine whether social networks play a role in explaining the 'Hispanic paradox' (lower breast cancer mortality despite often greater socioeconomic disadvantage in Hispanic women), something that has been frequently hypothesized but has gone largely untested because of a lack of data.