Qian Lu, an associate professor of psychology at UH, has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health in order to study the effects of how going to a social support group affects Chinese-American breast cancer survivors.
The survivors will participate in a support group named the Joy Luck Club, named after the 1989 book of the same name. Lu will lead the study, which will follow the participants for five years.
“The goal for the study and one of the reasons why the NIH funded the study is not only to figure out the benefits for women, but to figure out the difference ways we can evolve the field,” Lu told China Daily USA about the study. “We’re doing something that nobody was doing before, so we’re able to learn new ways of doing things and understand the unique needs of the Asian-American population and how we can help them. In a sense, we have to explore what the best ways are. Nobody has done anything like that with Asian Americans.”
