Following Her Path, Oncologist Highlights Issue of Cancer in Native Americans

Abstract

W hen Judith Salmon Kaur , M.D., wants to get a little laugh from an audience of oncologists, she talks about her maiden Choctaw Cherokee surname. “I tell them it’s very appropriate to be a salmon and going into cancer re search and cancer prevention because you’re always swimming upstream.” But that’s not so true nowadays, given the recent recognition of Kaur’s research. After decades of studying and treating cancer in American Indians, Kaur is now coauthor of a federal report showing that the progress the country has been making as a whole in reducing cancer is not being generally refl ected in American Indian populations. And solving the problem will not be simple because several cancers occur at much higher rates in some tribes than in others. This information, from the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975 – 2004, released last October, was the fi rst nationwide assessment of cancer rates in American Indians. And its results were markedly different from those that were presented to Kaur in 1984, when she fi rst started treating Northern Plain Indians. Cancer isn’t much of a problem in the 4 million Americans who are Indians, she was told, so reducing the alcoholism believed to be so rampant in Indians was the major focus of research and treatment. But Kaur and James Hampton, M.D., a 76-year-old oncologist in private practice in Oklahoma City — the only two oncologists in the nation who are members of an Indian tribe — helped to accurately portray the disease. They were the fi rst to detail growing rates of cancer in Indians and the fi rst to call for the creation of an American Indian cancer control plan. Kaur pioneered a cancer outreach program to American Indians that has since become a national model. “She has done a remarkable job in both educating Native Americans about cancer in their communities as well as highlighting the issue for the public,” Hampton said. “She is not only an excellent scientist but brings her own Native American perspective to cancer control. She has compassion, is very dedicated, and knows how to speak to the issue.” Kaur believes that her work on the American Indian cancer section of the report refl ects the notion that she was meant to do this work. “Indian philosophy says that there’s a path that you’re supposed to take, and if you stay on that, good things will happen.”