Establishment of a southern breast cancer cohort

Breast cancer continues to be among the most common cancers affecting women in the United States. Researchers investigating the area are turning their attention to novel prevention, detection, and treatment options. Recent molecular epidemiology research has highlighted the effects of both genetic and environmental exposures on an individual's risk of developing breast cancer and predicted response to treatment. Cohort designs are a potentially powerful tool that researchers can utilize to investigate the genetic and environmental factors affecting breast cancer risk and treatment options. This paper describes the recruitment of a community-based cohort of women in a southern state. The Spit for the Cure Cohort (SFCC), being developed by researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock, AR), is designed to be representative of the female population of the state with oversampling of women with a history of breast cancer and women of color. To date, the SFCC includes more than 14,000 women recruited from all 75 counties of Arkansas and six neighboring states. Methods used to recruit and maintain the cohort and collect both questionnaire data and genetic material are described, as are the demographic characteristics of the cohort as it currently exists. The recruitment methods utilized for the SFCC are rapidly building a breast cancer cohort and providing a large biorepository for molecular epidemiology research.