Alejandra de Mendoza, Ph.D.

Research Overview

Skin cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis in the United States. People who work outside get up to eight times more sun exposure than those who work indoors, putting them at higher risk for skin cancer. Many Hispanic people work outdoors in jobs like construction, landscaping and farming. Even though Hispanic people get skin cancer less often than non-Hispanic white people, they often have worse outcomes because the cancer is found in later stages.

Skin cancer can be prevented by using sunscreen, wearing protective clothing and seeking shade. However, Hispanic outdoor workers face many barriers to protecting themselves, such as not knowing their risk, not knowing preventive measures to take, or having limited access to health care.

There have been few interventions to enhance skin cancer prevention for Hispanic populations and to our knowledge, none has been developed specifically for Hispanic outdoor workers. Our research team and Community Advisory Board created SOLAR (Sun-safety for Outdoor Laborers at Risk), a culturally-informed, community-driven telenovela-style video to improve sun-safety behaviors and skin cancer prevention and early detection among Hispanic outdoor workers.

Our study will compare our video to a standard publicly available fact sheet shared with Hispanic outdoor workers to see which one works better.

Through partnerships with community organizations and patient advocates, my research uses community-engaged approaches to develop and evaluate multi-level interventions to reduce cancer disparities and to inform evidence-based prevention and early detection strategies.

Our project aims are to:

• Evaluate whether the telenovela video increases sun protection behavior among Hispanic outdoor workers.

• Assess our telenovela video’s effectiveness in improving knowledge and confidence related to sun protection.

• Determine Hispanic outdoor workers’ willingness to participate in future research that may include providing biospecimens, such as skin samples.

My “Why”

My interest in cancer research stems from witnessing multiple family members battle cancer and observing its profound impact across families, generations and communities. This experience, combined with my work as a cancer disparities researcher, has shaped my understanding of the unequal burden of cancer in underserved populations, and the critical role of collaborating with trusted community organizations to promote equity.

چرا تامین مالی مهم است

Funding from the Prevent Cancer Foundation is essential because Hispanic outdoor workers experience increased sun exposure yet have low awareness of skin cancer risk and do not often engage in sun-protective behaviors. Moreover, culturally tailored sun safety interventions for this population are scarce. This funding will support testing the efficacy of a community-driven, culturally tailored intervention designed to enhance sun-protective behaviors among Hispanic outdoor workers, a group underrepresented in cancer prevention and control research. Additionally, the project will generate critical preliminary data to inform a large-scale, multi-level trial.