Stuart Scott Legacy: Memorial cancer research fund helps NC scientists dig into the why of the disease
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) — Ten years after ESPN legend Stuart Scott lost his battle with cancer, his legacy is still changing the way we fight the disease.
The Stuart Memorial Cancer Research Fund has poured more than 22 million dollars into scientists.
One of the doctors his fund helped early on says that money didn’t just launch a project, it launched a movement for women who’ve been overlooked.
ABC11’s Tamara Scott sat down with Dr. Victoria Bae-Jump, who was among the first scientists to get support from Stuart Scott’s research fund back in 2015.
“I was just so excited because I was actually the first grant that had ever written on cancer disparities,” she explained.
But if you can believe it, she had no idea who he was.
“No, no, but my husband’s love of sports. So as soon as he heard, he was like, Oh my gosh, I know who that is.” She would soon come to know what the rest of the world already knew, not just the SportsCenter legend, but the man whose name would help her change lives.
“Endometrial cancer is really a pretty underfunded, understudied cancer, even though outcomes are really worsening for endometrial cancer,” she explained. The disease is underfunded, understudied, and for Black women unforgiving.
“Is it actually Black women die at twice the rate of white women from endometrial cancer?” she said. “We don’t really 100% know why the outcomes are.”
Stuart’s grant did more than sound good on paper, it helped them start digging into the why.
“Some of the things that we noted using, you know, that grant money was actually differences in genomic profiles between the tumors of black and white women and also differences in treatment outcomes,” she explained.
Those first dollars helped uncover the early clues, and those clues helped launch the Carolina Endometrial Cancer Study.
“So women get interviewed, they undergo a bunch of surveys, we get their medical records, we look at how do they present, how are they diagnosed, how they were treated, what happened,” Dr. Bae-Jump explained
A study that reaches across all 100 counties in North Carolina, turning stories, charts and tumor samples into answers.
“Just recently, we were awarded a grant from NCI of over $11 million $11.2 million, I guess in total, to establish a specialized program and excellence at UNC with our study team this actually specifically focused on cancer disparities.”
That is one grant growing into a specialized program and a whole new way of attacking endometrial cancer disparities.
Since 2015, the Stuart Scott Fund has:
- Awarded $22.5 million to 64 grantees
- Led to more than 10,000 publications and over 1,500 patents
- Connected to 100 plus clinical trials
- And helped those scientists bring in more than $2.5 billion in additional research funding
All of it is aimed at a reality that researchers like Dr. Bae-Jump cannot ignore.
“Black women have been very underrepresented. And so it’s harder, you know, to like really understand where the disparity is coming from. Everyone is touched by cancer in some way and I feel like it’s the greatest mission to improve and improve cancer outcomes to improve and decrease risk from cancer.”
For her, that mission is where Stuart’s legacy keeps working, beyond the highlights, in the lives that get more time because his lasting legacy funded the science.
The annual BOO-Yah gala will be held in New York on December 10th. To donate you can head to the V Foundation online.
You can also watch the premiere of ESPN’s 30 for 30 Documentary on Stuart’s life and legacy at 9 pm EST on ESPN and the ESPN app.
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