Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey Brings More Diversity into Biomedicine
The CURE program provides research training and professional enrichment for highly motivated, local and underserved high school and college students
'It’s human nature to identify with someone you share a culture with. Growing up, I never had an African-American doctor. I still don’t have an African-American doctor.'– Steffany Conyers
Growing up in Maplewood, Steffany Conyers was surrounded by illness. She saw her share of cancer and diabetes, and was close to someone who had tried to commit suicide. She had wondered why these conditions had affected her community.
But it wasn’t until she took a high school psychology class that she found out psychiatric illnesses like depression could be treated with medication.
“I realized medicine was a lot more than what I knew,” said Conyers.
By the time she arrived at Rutgers a few years later, she knew she wanted to become a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist.
When Conyers told her family members she had decided on pre-med, they were thrilled. “This has never been done before in our family.”
Conyers, now a senior, is the first in her family to go to college and for more than a year has been a participant in CURE –Continuing Umbrella for Research Experiences – at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. The program is designed to encourage more minorities nationwide to pursue careers in the biomedical field, where minorities are underrepresented.
Nearly 9 percent of physicians in the United States identify as a minority, but those numbers don’t reflect the general population, according to a 2014 report from the Association of American Colleges. African Americans, for example, account for 13 percent of the general population, but are only 4 percent of the physician workforce, the study found.
That discrepancy is a reason Sunita Chaudhary, director of research education at Rutgers Cancer Institute, sought funding to launch the CURE program there in 2003.
“Many diseases, including cancer, have a higher preponderance in minorities, yet minorities remain underrepresented in the biomedical healthcare workforce,” she said.
Overall, cancer death rates are 25 percent higher for blacks than for whites and though more white women are diagnosed with breast cancer, more black women die from it, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Chaudhary said minority doctors have a better understanding of issues in their communities and they are more likely to be trusted by community members when they offer behavioral interventions. “Patients might feel more comfortable with doctors who have a better understanding of their culture and ethnicity,” said Chaudhary.
Conyers, who is African American, can relate.
“It’s human nature to identify with someone you share a culture with,” Conyers said. “Growing up, I never had an African-American doctor. I still don’t have an African-American doctor.”
The CURE program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, is open to Rutgers undergraduates and New Brunswick Health Sciences Technology High School or New Brunswick High School students. The program accepts eight students . To be eligible, students must meet at least one of three criteria: be from a minority group underrepresented in the sciences, a first-generation college student or economically disadvantaged.
Students conduct research in the lab, shadow a mentor, attend lectures and workshops, write a report, and present their findings at the end of the two-year program. They have to commit to at least four hours weekly during the academic year and 40 hours in the summer. They also have to maintain a minimum 3.2 grade-point average. Currently, five of the eight participating students this year are undergraduates.
CURE aims to expose students to various career options in the biomedical field, not just a medical doctor, Chaudhary said. Students can work at a pharmaceutical or biotechnology company, or become a chemist or genetics counselor, for example. CURE provides them with real-life work training, she said.
Conyers still has a year left in the program but she has found that CURE is already helping her as she applies to medical schools, many of which prefer lab training.
Conyers works with mentor Daniel Medina, a resident research member at Rutgers Cancer Institute and an associate professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, to study how cells from a rare form of lymphoma interact with other cell types.
“Prior to this, I had no lab experience,” said Conyers. “Not only have I learned lab techniques, but I’ve also learned about cancer biology.”
Medina has been mentoring in the program since it began. The program offers him a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment that research often cannot on a daily basis.
“To get an end result in research can take years,” said Medina. “With the students, I can walk away at the end of the day knowing that I taught them something; that I accomplished something.”
And Conyers, who is also studying the effects of cancer-related terms such as “tumor” or “oncology” on families who have had cancer for her senior thesis, is one of his star students.
“She’s an ace. She’s persistent. She’s motivated. She comes in and she’s raring to go and she has fun doing it,” Medina said.
Chaudhary, who tracks the CURE graduates, said 58 students, including 32 undergrads, have participated in the program from 2003 through 2014. Three-quarters of those undergraduates have gone onto medical school while the rest went to graduate schools or entered the health care field, she said.
Chaudhary, a molecular biologist, also teaches a course on cancer biology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
“I teach; I conduct evaluation research, but CURE is the most rewarding part of my job,” she says. “It’s incredible to watch these students grow and go places.”