African Breast Cancer – Disparities in Outcomes – Plus (ABC-DO Plus): Ghana Mentoring Supplement

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is pleased to announce that Dr Clement Tetteh Narh, who was previously a Postdoctoral Scientist at IARC and is now a Research Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Fred N. Binka School of Public Health of the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Hohoe, Ghana, has been awarded a supplementary grant by the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the African Breast Cancer – Disparities in Outcomes – Plus (ABC-DO Plus): Ghana Mentoring Supplement.

Dr Narh’s mentor at IARC will be Dr Valerie McCormack, Deputy Head of the IARC Environment and Lifestyle Epidemiology Branch and Co-Principal Investigator of the ABC-DO study. In addition to his primary mentor, Dr Narh will be supported by a wider mentoring team, including Dr Isabel dos Santos Silva, a Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Co-Principal Investigator of the ABC-DO study, who has a long track record in supervision, mentoring, and breast cancer research internationally, and Dr Verna Vanderpuye, the Head of Radiation Oncology at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana, who will be able to provide strong context-specific advice.

The overall goal of this mentoring grant is to make inclusive, equitable strides for breast cancer control in low- and middle-income countries. There is a need to complement this angle with studies aimed at understanding the trajectories of women with breast cancer at lower levels of the health system, including an assessment of the proportion of women who never reach higher-level treatment centres and the barriers earlier in the patient journey.

This success in obtaining a grant award highlights how the IARC Research Training and Fellowships Programme can be a springboard for individual career growth and institutional capacity-building, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Read more about the ABC-DO study 

Read more about the grant 

Read more about the IARC Fellowships programme