Abstract 3686. Differences in disease presentation, and treatment outcomes of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer among Hispanics in a minority-serving institution.
What are your long-term goals?
I have three long-term career goals
- Scientific advancement – as a clinician-scientist, I aim to contribute to the knowledge of predictive markers of treatment response and outcomes in breast cancer, with a special emphasis on understanding the genomic basis of disparities.
- Advocacy and mentorship – As a minority women faculty member, I feel an obligation to mentor underserved minority trainees in clinical and research roles and to contribute to their success in achieving leadership roles.
- Leadership – to achieve maximum impact on improving cancer outcomes there is a need to establish scientific research collaborations regionally, nationwide, and worldwide and bring together diverse groups to achieve unified goals. This is the primary motivation for my leadership aspiration.
Please share information about how the pandemic has impacted your research over the last two years.
I would like to approach this question by categorizing research broadly into clinical research and translational research. During the initial stages of the pandemic, when the clinic volumes were down, I utilized this time to enhance clinical research productivity, completing retrospective review data collection and analysis, that provided pilot data for grant applications. In terms of translational research, I feel that productivity declined due to a lack of basic science personnel, lab closures, etc. Also, during the pandemic, the focus shifted towards more urgent needs such as providing clinical patient care and translational research had generally taken a backseat in that time period.