Meeting Highlights: DIA Global Annual Meeting 2024
Pink Warrior Spotlights Gaps in Breast Cancer Research at DIA 2024
DIA Patient Partner Courtney Shihabuddin
“A

fter my diagnosis of breast cancer at age 35, I struggled to wrap my head around what life would look like as a young woman with breast cancer. It also coincided with the pandemic, so there weren’t a ton of resources for me to utilize during my treatment,” explained DIA Patient Partner and cancer survivor Courtney Shihabuddin (BJE Consultants, The Pink Warrior) in this DIA 2024 interview. “I felt, once I made it to the other side, that I needed to utilize my knowledge and my voice to help other young women not feel so afraid and scared in a time that is so terrifying to a young woman with a new diagnosis.

“Most clinical research for breast cancer is done in the postmenopausal population because that is the greatest population affected by breast cancer. But there is the minority population of young women and the minority population of metastatic breast cancer, and metastatic breast cancer is the only (breast) cancer that kills,” she continued. “There’s just not enough research in those two segments. The young breast cancer population is disproportionately affected by metastatic disease and they’re the ones dying. That’s a gap in clinical research and care and we need more there.”