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Together with her research partners and students, Chair and Associate Professor of Exercise and Health Sciences  is looking to encourage black and African American women cancer survivors and their families to sit less and move more for better health in a new study funded by a U54 pilot grant.

"There are health guidelines that recommend 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity. ... If you can get to those recommendations, you're increasing the quality of life—and possibly preventing diseases, so that goes for people who are at risk for cancer and those who have had cancer,” Wright said. “For this study, we are also really interested in reducing sedentary time—sitting, lying down, watching television. Being less sedentary may have its own benefits that can reduce risk and increase health outcomes.”

, the National Institutes of Health gave UMass Boston and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC) nearly $17.8 million over five years to support their U54 Comprehensive Partnership for Cancer Disparities Research.

Wright has received a two-year $114,375 pilot grant out of the $17.8 million to design a program that can improve health outcomes for black and African American breast cancer survivors and their first degree relatives who are at a higher than average risk for breast cancer. Wright, who will be working with coinvestigator  and two researchers at DF/HCC, says what makes the pilot study particularly special is the involvement of the women’s families. They also plan to let participants determine the direction of the intervention program.

“This has really never been done before—this family approach to helping prevent cancer and improve quality of life,” Wright said. “Most physical activity or sedentary time interventions are guesses at what people might like or use. We’re taking a different approach. We want the community that we’re working with to tell us what they want, and help us design what this intervention should be.”

In her tenth year at UMass Boston, Wright is a behavioral scientist who focuses on e-Health (computer-assisted) self-care interventions for individuals across the lifespan. Following this 50-person pilot study, the goal is to develop an intervention prototype that can eventually be scalable to have greater reach and impact on cancer-related outcomes.

“We are intending that this prototype be something that is computer-based—something that uses technology. … We’re trying to create something that’s accessible to everyone, costs less, is scalable,” Wright said. “Most commercially available apps are not evidence-based, so having the opportunity to develop an evidence-based app, that’s exciting to us too. … It could be either a smartphone application or a website, but we might find out from the community members that that’s not what they want.”

The  brings researchers from UMass Boston and DF/HCC together to end cancer disparities and train the next generation of cancer researchers, so Wright’s grant will include undergraduate research assistants from a health disparity-facing population.

“We’re really excited about that, because we want them to not only support the research, but provide their voice. We’re creating a potential intervention, so we want to get their feedback too. So that’s a big part of it,” Wright said.

Wright and the team are currently reaching out to community stakeholders to get their input on possible participants.