Rick Kittles joined City of Hope as professor and founding director of the Division of Health Equities within the Department of Population Sciences. Kittles’ research focuses on understanding the complex issues surrounding race, genetic ancestry and disease, particularly health disparities among different ethnicities.His work focuses on research into prostate cancer and health disparities among African-Americans, a field of study motivated by his grandfather’s late-stage prostate cancer diagnosis and subsequent death while Kittles was in graduate school.“It was just so shocking and quick how it happened,” he recalled. “I had no idea it was such a big issue in the black community.”
By the end of 2022, Toni Monteiro had no fight left in her. She had been battling a rare blood cancer for three years. Her husband had just died. She was at risk of being evicted from her Washington, DC, apartment. Also, her heart was failing. “You’re really under stress,” Monteiro recalls her physician saying. ...
