Years before Neha Goel, MD, MPH, FACS, became a Fox Chase Cancer Center Fellow in Complex Surgical Oncology, the direction of her life’s work was being shaped. “Growing up, my mother encouraged my brother and me to volunteer in communities where people had limited resources in health care and education, and as a result suffered. What I witnessed ignited a lifelong passion to correct these unfair disparities.”

“After medical school, I was fascinated by surgical oncology and went to Columbia University Medical Center—New York Presbyterian for general surgery residency and Fox Chase Cancer Center for its exceptional balance of academic medicine, scientific discovery, and boots-on-the-ground clinical care.” Goel collaborated with illustrious docs like Sanjay Reddy, MD, Division Chief, Surgical Oncology and Co-Director, Marvin & Concetta Greenberg Pancreatic Cancer Institute; Jeffrey Farma, MD, Chair, Department of Surgery; and Richard Bleicher, MD, Chief, Division of Breast Surgery. Goel also learned from a diverse patient population that cancer does not care who you are, but that where you live may affect your survival and outcome.

After Fox Chase, Goel, joined the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami as an Assistant Professor of Surgery, where she developed the prospective, longitudinal Miami Breast Cancer Disparities Study to unravel the genomic and nongenomic underpinnings of breast cancer disparities. The Study looked at women from the Center’s NCI-designated cancer center and at women from a sister safety-net hospital—work that resulted in honoring Dr. Goel with the John K. and Judy H. Schulte Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

Goel notes, “Someone’s built neighborhood and social environment, independent of individual, tumor, and treatment factors, is associated with shorter breast cancer survival. For example, our research lab recently discovered that social adversity from both living in a disadvantaged neighborhood and experiencing an increased threat to one’s safety from high levels of crime revs up the sympathetic nervous system and is associated with more aggressive breast cancer biology when compared to women living in advantaged neighborhoods and those who do not report high levels of social adversity from a threat to their safety.”

Recently recruited by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, Goel’s ZIP Code to Genomic Code laboratory is expanding on her Miami work, studying New York City breast cancer outcomes, ZIP code by ZIP code. A key component of the study is to examine if/why people with the same race/ethnicity, insurance, tumor, and treatment characteristics who live in different parts of the city may have different outcomes. Moreover, given that it is difficult to move someone from one neighborhood to another, Goel and her team are actively developing interventions to help reduce activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and in turn, reverse aggressive biology as one approach to achieving health equity. The New York ZIP Code to Genomic Code study looks at the long view, with eyes on an eventual national roll-out.

“Everyone deserves a good healthy life, and part of that means reducing the cancer burden for everyone, in all ZIP codes. I am grateful my mother put me on this important path so early on.”