Our findings are begining to help improve our ability to more effectively communicate the complex science relating to breast cancer to New York teachers who are largely unaware that teachers experience significantly higher incidence of breast cancer than other groups.

Teachers in New York State and nationwide experience significantly elevated cases of breast cancer. This project seeks to develop improved ways of communicating the complex information of what is known about the causes of breast cancer in ways which will not unduly alarm or concern those involved.

Our analyses thus far have resulted in two areas of findings: 1) Perceptions of Risk Factors for Breast Cancer: The Case of NYS Teachers; and 2) Predicting Place-Based Enviro-Health Concern: The Case of NYS Teachers. The primary research question in the first analysis was: what predicts the attribution of environmental risk factors for breast cancer in this population? In the survey, we asked respondents an open-ended question: "What are the most important things for increasing the risk for developing breast cancer?" We analyzed the results in terms of county of residence, other environmental health concerns, perceived risk of breast cancer for various groups, information sources, and other variables. We found that the attribution of environmental factors to breast cancer risk seems to be related to concern about the environment in the community and school building environments, as well as to attributions of responsibility for risk reduction. Our findings enable us to theorize a model of environmental attributions, in which a constellation of beliefs amongst many of the teachers takes shape. We were also able to develop a comparative model that looks at reproductive risk factor attribution. In the second analysis, we sought information on the ability of certain individual, social and place-based factors in predicting what we have termed, "place-based enviro-health concern." This measure is a composite of seven potential community environmental health concerns. Factors that turned out to be predictors of place-based enviro-health concern included various aspects of community involvement - such as a greater history of talk with family and friends about breast cancer diagnoses, as well as participation in various organizations, ecological attitudes, and experience with certain environmental conditions.

Combined with ongoing results from the California Teachers (epidemiologic) Study, our results will enable the development of an education/communication intervention on understanding breast cancer risk targeted at New York State teachers. Our findings such as those that describe the constellation of environmental health beliefs that occur as part of a belief in environmental risk factors for breast cancer, as well as those findings which locate attitudes and aspects of community life which predict environmental health concern, are key to developing appropriate ways to frame information about the still emerging science of environment's role in breast cancer risk. We expect that our findings will contribute to greater attention to local context in these communications, with the possibility of regionally tailored programs. Our continued analyses of Year Two data, and Year Three research on the role of social networks, will also inform these efforts.

• Carmi Orenstein
• Santhi Gollapalli
• Cecilia Lum
• Carol Devine
• Bruce Lewenstein
• Sukriti Issar
• Zheng Yang