Black scientist fights to fund her cancer research: Bias in health funding

Black health care nonprofit leaders on how system bias in funding their organizations and research may hold back medical innovations.

For the last five years, Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green, a physicist and cancer researcher, has fought to fund her cancer treatment technology. Green has peer-reviewed studies on her research, which is still in the early stages, and has also received a $1.1 million grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs. But that research is now on hold due to a lack of funding. Green said she needs to launch human clinical trials, and to do that, she said, will cost some $90 million. Green launched her nonprofit to support her research, the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation in 2016 after her beloved aunt and uncle died from cancer.