Two Cave Hill academics, along with a medical colleague from sister campus Mona, are in the first cohort of the prestigious international breast cancer research initiative for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), the Rising Scholars: Breast Cancer programme.
Drs. Heather Harewood and Natalie Greaves of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, and Mona’s Dr. Simone Badal are among 25 global researchers who have been chosen to participate in the programme that focuses on providing opportunities to Minority Serving Institutions MSIs) and underserved communities.
The Rising Scholars: Breast Cancer programme is a partnership between the esteemed Springer Nature, a German-British company that publishes trusted research, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), the world’s largest private funder of breast cancer research which aims to provide additional resources for professional development of ECRs in cancer research.
The selection of these three researchers highlights the exceptional quality of their scholarship and potential to advance key healthcare issues in the Caribbean.
Physician scientist Dr. Natalie Greaves is Lecturer and Coordinator of the MPhil/PhD programme in Public Health and Epidemiology. Her research explores the genetic, lifestyle, and health system factors impacting the survivorship and quality of life of breast cancer patients.
Dr. Heather Harewood has a background in health systems management and is the Head of the Public Health Group in the Faculty of Medical Sciences. She has partnered with Dr. Greaves to co-lead the Cancer Awareness and Reality Experience (CARE) Project (Barbados), which examined the lived experiences of women with breast cancer, and she inspired a similar project in Jamaica.
Senior Lecturer Dr. Simone Badal is renowned for her groundbreaking work on cancer cell lines that holds promise for unlocking the genetic basis of cancer patterns in the Caribbean, with the potential to inform treatment development.
Drs. Badal and Greaves are leaders in a multinational African Cancer Genome Project as part of the African-Caribbean Cancer Consortium (AC3). All three UWI researchers are part of the AC3 Breast Cancer Working Group.
As part of the Rising Scholar: Breast Cancer programme, Drs. Greaves, Harewood and Badal will participate in masterclasses with Springer Nature editors and trainers to enrich their skills in scientific writing and publishing, communicating research to the public, and data sharing and management.
